"After the loss, I just get very angry, so I say those things sometimes to myself" - Mirra Andreeva 'not proud' with how she handled temperant after vexing defeat

Tennis was put to one side at times during Mirra Andreeva's contest against Katerina Siniakova, with multiple outbursts throughout the match taking the headlines on the way to a 4-6, 7-6(5), 6-3 defeat at the hands of the Czech, ending her title defence at Indian Wells abruptly.

After going 3-0 down in the early stages, the reigning champion rallied and won the first set. Her fortunes were going to change as a bucket load of unforced errors saw her swiftly fall into the hands of Siniakova, who was going to take her chances. The 10-time doubles major champion forced a tiebreak in a mammoth game ahead of levelling the tie. After being broken by Andreeva, she replied in cut-throat style, clinching the final four games and seeing out a fiery contest between two ferocious competitors.

After the match, Andreeva gave her opponent a lot of credit. "Of course she's a tricky opponent to face. She plays a lot of doubles, so she has good hands, good skills," she stated in her press conference. "I've never played against her. I mean, it was a tough match, of course. Was not the best day for me in terms of how I played, but also a lot of credits to her. She played good. She showed some good tennis on the court. Wishing her the best luck for the tournament."

After losing the second set, the Russian needed to take some much-needed anger out. This came in the form of launching her racket towards her chair before finishing it off with some defiant blows to the ground. She also later asked for members of her team to leave the court with anger brewing inside.

It is something that she admitted needs working on. "I can say that there were a lot of emotions that I was going through after the loss," she stated. "But of course I'm not really proud of how I managed it. I'm not really proud of how I handled it in the end. Those are the things that really need to work on soon. I don't know. Not in the future but whenever I get the chance. I hope that I can work on it and I get better in that, as well."

She could not keep control of her emotions at the end of the match after picking up a damaging defeat. It seemed that she had shouted an expletive towards the stands as the red-faced teenager bowed out of Indian Wells with a whimper. According to her, this was not directly aimed at the crowd, rather herself at least at the start.

"It was to myself, to everyone, basically. I mean, after the loss, I just get very angry, so I say those things sometimes to myself," she explained. "I mean, first to myself, of course, but then, yeah, it was just anger coming out, just a lot of emotions. Not really towards anyone."

After losing to a doubles specialist, she now needs to bounce back and return to the court alongside the talented Victoria Mboko almost instantly. She turned to social media as a short-term way to forget her troubles. "I was just stuck in the locker room, scrolling Reels in Instagram, trying to get my mind off of it," Andreeva commented.

Aside from that, her mind was only on the doubles. "Other than that, I was just, yeah, trying to get ready for doubles, because obviously, I mean, I lost my singles match. It's not like I'm going to go on court and tank my doubles because I don't feel like playing."

They played Hailey Baptiste and Jelena Ostapenko, who are a very dangerous duo. It went to a third set deciding tiebreak where Andreeva and Mboko survived two match points before taking one of their own to advance into the quarterfinals. It will be played on March 11 against the fifth seeds Anna Danilina and Aleksandra Krunic.

For this win, she credited the Canadian Open champion. "I just had to calm down, get ready for doubles, and warm up. Then we went on court with Vicky [Mboko]. I just had a lot of fun. It's just nice that we also won the match. It was a real battle out there today, as well. She helped me to feel better a little bit, to at least win the doubles match today. With her, it was just easy to kind of forget a little bit about the singles match on the court."

A harsh trend for Andreeva has been recently throwing away tight tennis matches. She obviously spurned a one-set lead against Siniakova in California but beforehand in Dubai came through a cauker of a match against Amanda Anisimova, failing to serve it out after taking a one-set lead before losing a third-set tiebreak. This was met by more emotional scenes. In the Qatar Open, she squandered a match point in a dramatic contest against the eventual finalist Mboko, going down in three sets.

On other days, all of these contests go the way of the 18-year-old who has not been able to convert these matches into victories. "I think, what, last three matches that I lost, I was, like, so up in the score, had a lot of opportunities, starting with the loss in Doha to Vicky, then to Amanda in Dubai, now here."

The next task is to internally duscuss why this has occurred with her team and specifically coach, Conchita Martinez, and go from there. "There were a lot of opportunities that I didn't take. I mean, I'm just gonna talk to my team about it. We didn't talk yet about the match. We're just gonna talk and see what is the best way to handle this, and we're just gonna work and try to get better."

From a tennis point of view, Andreeva had a soft spot for the way that five-time Grand Slam champion Martina Hingis played the sport. "In terms of game style, I think one of my idols is Martina Hingis. I really love her as a person and as a player as well."

As temperament and reacting to bad situation goes, Andreeva argued in favour for Serena Williams. "I was actually thinking about it recently," she admitted. "I think the one person that was handling losses very well was Serena Williams, like I've never heard or seen her upset or, you know, even I remember, like, she was losing finals on the slams, and she would always smile and be happy for her opponent that she won the match and she got the trophy."

Following on from what she stated earlier, it could be something that she would like to improve. "So maybe it's something that I can also try to learn, and yeah, we'll see how that's gonna go. Yeah, we'll see."