After spending part of the season on the sideline with injury, it is about playing catchup for the
WTA Newcomer of the Year in 2023 and
Mirra Andreeva is certainly doing that at the
Madrid Open. A tournament that she had her breakout at last year.
In fact, she reached the Last 16 last year so she has done her job in defending her points at the very least off her ranking. So it is very much pushing forward from here and she saw off a resurgent
Marketa Vondrousova in a rampant second set winning 7-5, 6-1 in the end.
Vondrousova despite recent issues off the court where she has filed for divorce from her husband Stepan and also had her grandfather passing showed some of her best recently in Stuttgart in beating Aryna Sabalenka. But loses in the Last 32 in Madrid to the 16-year-old prodigy. It was a tale of contrasting sets as Andreeva went 4-1 up in the first but Vondrousova showed fight and resolve as the Russian fell apart.
It was bookended by Vondrousova making it 5-4 up with a break suddenly winning four games on the spin. But she lost her serve completely at the wrong time. Andreeva went 6-5 up and took the set from there. The second was what Andreeva would've had designed in the first. She went 5-1 up with two breaks and wasn't troubled at all on her serve in a pretty sensational display as Vondrousova could barely win points on her own serve no mind Andreeva's. But Andreeva sealed the win. Next up is Jasmine Paolini or Caroline Garcia in the Last 16 for a spot in the Quarter-Finals, they sit in the same section as Elena Rybakina.
