Mumbai: A number of nuggets stick out in Mirra Andreeva’s rousing run to the WTA Dubai Open closing taking down Iga Swiatek on Thursday and Elena Rybakina on Friday: At 17, she is the youngest WTA 1000 finalist and the youngest to beat three Grand Slam champions in a single occasion since Maria Sharapova. She can also be the primary participant aged below 18 that each Swiatek and Rybakina have misplaced to on the WTA stage.
Russia’s Mirra Andreeva celebrates profitable her semi-final towards Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina. (REUTERS)
The takeaways: Andreeva is an impressive expertise. She can also be an outlier in girls’s tennis in the mean time.
At world No.14, the Russian is the one teen within the prime 100 of the WTA rankings. On the corresponding males’s facet, the amount is thrice as a lot. What’s extra telling is that between 100 and 200 within the WTA charts, there are 11 gamers aged 19 or beneath. It not solely factors to the growing problem for younger feminine professionals to interrupt into the higher echelons but additionally the evolving nature of the ladies’s sport.
“This area of 100-200 in the WTA,” says 19-year-old Alexandra Ela, the third-highest ranked teen at world No.139, “it’s really a jungle.”
That jungle would usually be densely populated with recent faces and teenage trailblazers making large breakthroughs. Girls’s tennis previously was a beehive of younger sensations, thriving on the buzzing presence of the likes of Monica Seles, Jennifer Capriati, Martina Hingis, Steffi Graf, Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams, to call a couple of. Even within the final decade, teenagers Coco Gauff, Bianca Andreescu and Emma Raducanu, aside from Jelena Ostapenko who gained the 2017 French Open days after turning 20, made a Slam dunk in taking the leap on the largest stage.
For teen skills now, that leap is much less sudden and extra strenuous.
“The transition to women’s tennis can be quite challenging now,” says Linda Fruhvirtova, 19. “I’m still at an age where I have many areas to improve — the speed of my shots, physicality, serve.”
Linda, in a method, exemplifies the current teen story. One half of the richly promising Czech siblings — she and her youthful sister Brenda gained back-to-back Les Petits As titles — Linda rocketed from the 300s to world No.77 after pocketing her maiden WTA title in Chennai in 2022. She made the Spherical of 16 of the Australian Open and scaled a career-high rating of 49 in 2023, however is again within the “jungle” as the present world No.195.
Nonetheless “adapting” to the rigours of the professional tour, she singles out the power of competitors and bodily sport model as the important thing differentiators within the girls’s sport now.
“The girls around 200, the quality of their game is way better than it used to be years ago,” Linda says. “Plus, the game is becoming more physical. The older girls are more physical, maybe stronger than me. That’s what I’m working on. And that comes with time.”
Gauff, the teenaged US Open champion of 2023, alluded up to now; of the gulf “physically between a 15-year-old body to a 20-25-year-old” being wider within the trendy sport. It wanted Andreeva “to go for my shots, to be aggressive” to earn her first win towards Swiatek and Rybakina. Staying in rallies with older and stronger baseline power-hitters is more and more a battle for youthful our bodies. Particularly as courts worldwide are typically getting slower.
“Earlier, the courts were faster,” Rebecca Marino, the previous world No.38, says. “Courts and balls are a little bit slower now. So we’re seeing longer points.”
Marino, 34, had a comparatively early begin into the elite, breaking into the highest 50 at 21. She returned to the highest 100 in 2022 after a decade-long absence and is on the cusp of getting again there in her mid-thirties. The Canadian believes a part of this altering narrative can also be resulting from extra feminine gamers having the ability to delay their careers and play at a excessive stage. Madison Keys, as an example, grew to become a first-time Slam winner at 29.
“Players have a lot more longevity in their careers. It’s a fantastic trend,” Marino says.
“There are lot of women approaching the 30s, or past their 30s, in the top 100,” Alexandra, 19, says.
It solely reveals the likes of Alexandra that they’ve loads of time and house of their improvement path. Even when, for now and with the lone exception of Andreeva, these teenagers are but to hit the quick lane.
“Us gals are hanging around a bit longer,” Marino says. “We’re not giving them the chances. The top 100 becomes a lot more difficult to crack into.”