Top Moments of 2019, No. 3: Andreescu's determined declaration

In a decade to remember, 2019 didn't disappoint as the closing act. Click here to review the Top 10 moments from the final season of the 2010s.

Bianca Andreescu was tired. Her feet were burning. Her arm was aching. The 18-year-old had defeated four seeded players on her way to the final of Indian Wells, where she was now playing former No. 1 Angelique Kerber.

Andreescu had had a good start, winning the first set, but Kerber had regrouped and was up a break in the third when Andreescu called her coach on court.

Unlike the usual version of these visits with the coach chattering away while the player sits sullenly silent, it was Andreescu who issued a declaration. "I want this so bad," the teenager told coach Sylvain Bruneau.

It was a startling statement from an inexperienced player who could easily have been expected to fold against an established player following a draining week. But Andreescu backed it up, coming back to win in three sets and take her first WTA title. She would not drop another match, apart from retirements and withdrawals, for more than six months.

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But there would be no repeat of such scenes at the chair, for following her next event Andreescu stopped calling her coach on court. The ambitious up-and-comer wanted to get used to the way she would have to play Grand Slams, where coaching is not allowed. That was no simple task, because her powerful and varied game gives her a lot of game plans to choose from, but on court, Andreescu wanted to implement them on her own.

It paid off. Coming back from injury, the hometown favorite took the title in Toronto, then won the US Open, becoming the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam singles title.

She did say she wanted it badly, and it showed.