What a difference a year can make.
In 2023, Mirra Andreeva left Melbourne Park feeling equal parts exhilaration and devastation after a bittersweet Australian Open campaign.
DRAW: Australian Open 2024 women’s singles
At age 15, she’d achieved a career milestone in reaching a first major final in the Australian Open girls’ tournament, only to lose a three-hour, 18-minute battle to her close friend Alina Korneeva.
This year, the 16-year-old arrives in Melbourne as one of the newest members of the world’s top 50 after spectacular early progress in her first year on the professional tour.
As a qualifier at both Roland-Garros and Wimbledon last season, Andreeva claimed multiple main-draw wins at each of those Grand Slams. Her breakthrough at the latter was especially impressive, marking the first time she’d ever competed on grass courts.
Showcasing the foresight that complements her potent court craft, Andreeva points to her difficult Australian Open loss as pivotal to her rise.
“Of course, I was super sad. I was exhausted after the match and of course I think I will remember this match till the end of my life because it was one of the toughest losses that I’ve had,” she reflected as she launched her 2024 season in Brisbane.
“I look back and I think maybe that I should lose this match to have everything that I have now … I’m grateful that this happened to me and now I can go back and improve on all the things that I didn’t possess.”
Andreeva proved a fast and efficient study in the lessons from that match.
On her return to competition after AO 2023, she constructed a 16-match winning streak with back-to-back ITF title runs in Switzerland and headline-grabbing progress at the Madrid Open. Capitalising superbly on a wildcard entry, the teenager stunned Leylah Fernandez, Beatriz Haddad-Maia and Magda Linette to reach the final 16 at the WTA 1000 tournament.
“I was super excited to play on the stadium in Madrid and on these perfect clay courts. I was just trying to enjoy and to remember the atmosphere,” smiled Andreeva, who considers her first-round win over Leylah Fernandez, the 2021 US Open finalist, as one of the best in her career.
It adds to the memories that the teenager has accumulated in her relatively short time in tennis.
Andreeva, whose older sister Erika also competes on tour, explained her connection to the sport began when her mother, Raisa, watched Marat Safin compete against Roger Federer at Australian Open 2005 and fell in love with tennis. She determined it could provide a bright future for her daughters.
It’s a decision that’s taken Mirra from her birth city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia to an elite training centre in Cannes, France, where Daniil Medvedev has also trained. Mirra and Erika are based in the southern French city when they are not on tour.
Mirra professes to be a “normal teenager”, who likes to spend her spare time shopping and watching Netflix. She is completing her studies through online school and as an avid reader, is currently working her way through the classic novel Gone with the Wind.
And like many teenagers, she can become starstruck around her heroes. After Andy Murray congratulated Andreeva on her Madrid breakthrough, Andreeva revealed she found the former world No.1” beautiful”. On meeting him at Wimbledon, the teenager was too shy to strike up a conversation.
But Andreeva – who is represented by sports management agency IMG and has lucrative partnerships with Nike and Wilson - is increasingly coming into her own among those superstars.
“Honestly, I’ve already met Andy a few times and he said ‘hi’ first!” she beamed in Brisbane. “So I was super happy, and I met [Rafael] Nadal too. I’ve met almost everybody and now I feel like they are getting to know me as a player, as a person and I feel very welcomed here.”
As one of 11 teenagers in the Australian Open women’s main draw, and one of only three 16-year-olds, Andreeva can build on her “next big thing” status at the Australian Open.
She arrives at a first-round meeting with Bernarda Pera as a far more complete, and experienced, competitor than the one who lost in the AO 2023 girls’ final.
“Honestly, just to try to play. It doesn’t matter who and when you play, just play, just to do my best and that’s it because before I was getting upset. I was not very focused all the time,” she commented on the lessons learned since she last competed at Melbourne Park.
“In 2023, I just tried to improve these things in myself. I’m still improving but I think it’s much better.”