17-year-old Mirra Andreeva makes Indian Wells final after beating Iga Swiatek
To face Sabalenka in the final
Rising Russian tennis star Mirra Andreeva has become the first 17-year-old to reach the women’s final at Indian Wells since 2001. She achieved this by defeating defending champion Iga Swiatek in the semi-finals.
Andreeva has now beaten the world number two twice in a row. She also knocked Swiatek out in the quarter-finals in Dubai in February and went on to become the youngest winner of a WTA 1000 tournament there.
The teenager has now won 11 matches in a row. In this match, she bounced back after losing a one-sided second set to beat the experienced Polish player 7-6 (7-1), 1-6, 6-3.
Andreeva will play world number one Aryna Sabalenka in the final. Sabalenka easily defeated American Madison Keys 6-0, 6-1. The Belarusian got revenge for her loss to Keys at the Australian Open earlier this year.
Speaking after her win, ninth seed Andreeva said, “I feel proud of myself because I handled the nerves and pressure quite well. After she (Swiatek) destroyed me in the second set, I thought, ‘OK, I’ll just try to fight.’ There wasn’t much else I could do because she was playing amazingly. I just decided to fight for every point and make sure the ball went in. In the end, it worked.”
Andreeva is the youngest woman to reach the Indian Wells final since Kim Clijsters in 2001. Clijsters lost that final to Serena Williams.
Andreeva now faces a tough challenge against Sabalenka, who only needed 51 minutes to beat fifth seed Keys.
Their match was a rematch of the Australian Open semi-final, where Keys had beaten Sabalenka 6-3, 2-6, 7-5 to end Sabalenka’s hopes of winning a third straight title in Melbourne.
Sabalenka said, “That Australian Open match was really painful for me, and I needed time to recover. If I had lost today, it would have stayed in my head, and I didn’t want that. So I stayed focused and was really hungry to win against Madison.”
