The French Open has its youngest semi-finalist in 27 years after 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, in her own words, “kept her cool in ousting a deviant Aryna Sabalenka.
This match was a strangely compelling spectacle, pitting the teenage challenger against a woman who was struggling to punch through her forehand due to what appeared to be severe stomach cramps.
Andreeva probably should have made this match shorter than she did, given her opponent’s condition. Following Novak Djokovic’s fight against Francisco Cerundolo on Monday night, Sabalenka moved without her usual fluidity and apparently contemplated a retirement mid-match.
At one point in the first set, she ran her hand across her throat, as if to suggest she was about to withdraw. But she has never withdrawn from a tennis match, and to her credit, she fought to the end in her 6-7, 6-4, 6-4 defeat.
It is not clear what exactly the problem was, but rumors are circulating about illnesses in the locker room. Daniil Medvedev is said to have struggled in his fourth-round defeat to Alex de Minaur on Monday, although he stuck to dressing room protocol by not talking about it during his post-match press conference.
Andreeva’s unexpected victory means that Saturday’s final will be an easy result on paper. We know that the two remaining players in the top half of the draw are both proven winners: defending champion Iga Swiatek and reigning US Open champion Coco Gauff.
In the bottom half, however, we have a semi-final between Andreeva and Jasmine Paolini, the little Italian who upset Elena Rybakina in Wednesday’s opening match. Neither had been past the fourth round of a major before this event.
Andreeva is not a power player like Sabalenka and Rybakina, but she plays with soft hands and great intelligence. She continued to move Sabalenka around the pitch, exploiting her physical problems with clever angles and varied trajectories, often surrendering lobs from defensive positions.
In fact, it was a lob that clinched the win, although this was a more attacking shot that curved over a stranded Sabalenka as she stood at the net.
Andreeva received a warm applause at the end of the match, which lasted 2 hours and 29 minutes. She is a popular figure here, as we saw on Monday when she knocked out the last remaining French player Varvara Gracheva, but still heard the crowd chanting her name during her post-match interview.
This was another fine display of creative stroke play to bring back the memory of Martina Hingis – who was 16 when she reached the final here in 1997. At the current pace of progress, some insiders suggest that Andreeva could join the three leading Eastern Europeans (Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina) and Gauff to create a new “Big Five” of tennis.
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