Mirra Ball: Andreeva's Australian Open win over Ons Jabeur was stunning—but not totally unexpected

Teenagers are contrarians by nature, and in that sense Mirra Andreeva sounded like a typical teen after her stunning—but not completely unexpected—6-0, 6-2 win over Ons Jabeur in Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday.

When on-court interviewer Laura Robson told the 16-year-old that she looked like she had “no nerves whatsoever” during the match, Andreeva quickly disabused of her the notion.

“That’s not true,” she said in her cheerfully blunt way, to laughs from the audience.

A little later, Robson suggested that Andreeva’s “game has come on so much” in the last year.

“No,” was Andreeva’s one-word response. Again, rather than sounding rude, it sparked another ripple of laughter from the crowd, as well as Robson.

It isn’t her game that has come along, Andreeva said, as much as it is her attitude. According to her, she’s a lot more mature now, at 16, than she was way back when she was only 15. Naturally, that line, delivered with wide-eyed earnestness, got the loudest laughs of all.

Yet it’s hard to argue with her. Andreeva played the most mature match of her young career against Jabeur. She has only been on most fans’ radar since last May, when she leaped out of the juniors and into the fourth round of the WTA 1000 in Madrid. Since then, she has reached the third round at Roland Garros, the fourth round at Wimbledon, and cracked the Top 50, all while playing a restricted number of tournaments due to WTA age limits. This was her first win over a Top 10 opponent and bona fide Grand Slam contender.

“Probably it was the best match [of my career],” Andreeva said. “The first set, I didn’t expect that I would play this good. Second set was also not bad. So, yes, for me it was an amazing match.”

We’ll take it as a good sign that she can beat the No. 6 player in the world 6-2 in a set, and call the performance “not bad.”

In the nine months that most of us have been watching her, Andreeva has looked like a new player virtually every time she shows up at a tournament.

Seeing her in Madrid last may, I thought her forehand would be a vulnerability, and that she was a little too instinctively defensive—not unlike Coco Gauff in her earliest days on tour. On Wednesday, though, Andreeva hit her forehand with authority, depth, and shape. And rather than sitting back and waiting for an error, the way many juniors will, she showed a knack for counterpunching and quickly shifting from a defensive position to an offensive one. Also, while she’s just 5-foot-7, her serve has a new snap to it. Maybe the tour’s age-limits rules help by giving her time to work on her game, rather than competing and chasing prize money week in and week out.

“I was really nervous before the match, but I saw that she was nervous too. I don’t know. It kind of helped me, because I know I’m not the only one who is nervous before the match.” - Mirra Andreeva

Andreeva’s backhand remains her weapon of choice, and a shot that could one day be among the sport’s most lethal. The trend in tennis these days is to “hunt forehands” as early and often as possible in a rally. Andreeva goes in the other direction. She runs around her forehand and hunts backhands, and she has the natural talent to drive it, slice, or hit drop shots with it. Jabeur is the acknowledged master of the drop, but the teen often beat her to the punch with that shot.

Later, Andreeva was willing to admit she’s “not very bad” at drop shots—that’s about as braggadocious as she gets. As a Jabeur fangirl, though, she’s not ready to say she’s better at them just yet.

“I decided at first to not do a lot of drop shots, because I think she’s better [at them], so I just decided to try to beat her on the baseline,” Andreeva said. “After, I don’t know, it was just the momentum when I decided to do a lot, couple of drop shots, and I think she’s still better than me in this, but I will improve.”

Andreeva has easy power. She has feel and variety. She doesn’t have an obvious weakness from the baseline. Maybe just as important, though, she also seems able to read her opponents—not just their shots, but their moods and mindsets as well.

“I was really nervous before the match, but I saw that she was nervous too,” Andreeva said of Jabeur. “I don’t know. It kind of helped me, because I know I’m not the only one who is nervous before the match.”

For all of that, Andreeva is 16, and she won’t always be able to rein in her 16-year-old emotions and take her disappointments stoically. At Wimbledon last year, she received a point penalty for slamming her racquet, and refused to shake the chair umpire’s hand afterward. When things don’t go as smoothly as they did against Jabeur, we’re likely to see her in a much less charmingly cheerful mood. And she knows it.

“I hope this will not happen,” she said of the possibility of having bad days and tough losses in the future. “But I think it will because it’s tennis.”

The good news is that she seems to know what not to worry about just yet. She only knows one direction right now—upward.

“I mean, I’m 16, why do I have to think about the rankings?” Andreeva says. “I’m going a bit higher, and so my goal is to go higher and higher maybe for a little bit but still higher.