Mirra Andreeva might be the best new tennis player you’ve never heard of, and a breath of fresh air to go with it as she takes this year’s French Open by storm.
She waxed lyrical about meeting a “beautiful” Andy Murray at the Madrid Open where the 16-year-old played recently, to which Murray pondered how good a tennis player she might eventually become when she gets her eyes fixed.
And she has set up a third-round match with another player she calls beautiful in Coco Gauff who, at 19, seems almost ancient in comparison to the younger teenager.
There are echoes of Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open in the effervescent way that Andreeva has breezed through Paris to date. Like Raducanu, she had to come through qualifying to make the main draw and has not dropped a set in three qualifying and five main draw matches.
But Andreeva is doing it younger still than the Briton, in fact the younger player in the French Open third round in nearly two decades.
Her press conferences in Paris have become must-watch events. In her one after beating Diane Parry yesterday, she covered everything from being a diva to meeting Novak Djokovic for the first time while he was belting out a song in the corridor at Roland Garros last year.
But there is no shortage of ambition from her at what is only her first Grand Slam. Asked for her dream, she said: “I know that Djokovic, he did 22 Grand Slams… so I want to go until 25. If it will be possible, I don’t know.
“But I will just play. For now, my goal is to win match by match, to win the next match. If I win this match, to win the next match again. That’s it.”
There are echoes too of the Williams sisters – Andreeva’s 18-year-old sister Erika was also in the French Open main draw only to be knocked out in the opening round.
Quite what success they will go on to have will become clear in time but they credit their mother Raisa for their introduction to the sport. A massive Marat Safin fan, she introduced the siblings to the sport in Siberia to Sochi and then Cannes, France.
She showed enough in the junior ranks to be snapped up by the sports management company IMG before she was even a teenager.
And in her first show-court appearance on Court Simonne-Mathieu yesterday, she looked entirely like she belonged on the big stage.
She is a fan of Murray and, in turn, he is of her. Repeatedly asked about her take on him since their Madrid moment, she said: “What can I say about Andy Murray? He was just nice. I didn’t expect that he would be nice off the court because he always seems so focused and always into himself. So, I didn’t expect to see him so nice… he was smiling, and that’s what I liked.”
Facing Gauff tomorrow will be an undoubted step up in class. The pair have practised once before, and Andreeva was blown away by the level of aggression from a player who not so long ago was tennis’ next best thing.
As well as improving her tennis and mental approach, her other major target is not to get ahead of herself.
“As my coach says, don’t be like a diva, stay humble all the time,” she said. “I will just be me. I will not go out as a diva.”
To date, she has not seemingly put a foot wrong both on and off court, even to the point of some diplomacy over the players she looked up to.
“Roger, he has always been my idol,” she said. “He’s always been my No1 but, after Roland Garros 2022, when Rafa won it, I don’t know why but, in my head, everything is turned. Now Rafa and Roger, they’re in first place but I don’t want to offend Novak. So, let’s say they’re three on the first places.
“I like the way that he plays. He’s counter punching a lot, and he’s a good defender. He’s a good mover on the court so, yes, I like the way he plays.”
