Mirra Andreeva: Madrid Open sees many happy returns for 17-year-old tennis star

Mirra Andreeva, the Russian teenager who refuses to act her tennis age, knows that keeping too close an eye on her ranking can lead to all sorts of toxic brain games. 

It can drive players to think of themselves as numbers rather than human beings. It can make them measure results rather than process — tracking movement up and down the ladder rather than how they are improving each day.

This mindset has a way of inserting itself into the brain at the most inconvenient time, sending players down the rabbit hole of the consequences of a win or a loss when the outcome is still up for debate, even at the crucial moments of a match, when they’re supposed to be focused on hitting the next ball. 

As the Madrid Open reaches its final days, so many of the top women are still alive. That includes Andreeva’s hero, Ons Jabeur, as well as the world No 1, Iga Swiatek, and Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion. All of them have fallen victim to the rankings obsession at some point in their careers — Swiatek burst into tears at the news of Ash Barty’s retirement when the Australian was world No 1, knowing it opened a door for her — and all of them, sometimes, still do. 

Sorry: Andreeva can’t help it.

See, she and her mother, Raisa, who got her and her sister into tennis when they were toddlers in Siberia, cut a deal this year. Andreeva really wants a dog. She has noticed a handful of other players travel with their dogs. She wants one, badly. She’s arguing that it will be a kind of service pet and help her with the usual tensions of teenage life and the unusual ones of teenage life as a budding tennis star. 

Her mother, ever the tennis mom, saw an opportunity to incentivize pet ownership. Make the top 20, she told Mirra, and you can get a dog.

“This is my goal for this year,” Andreeva said, combining her deadly serious tone with the twinkle in her eyes that tells you to add a wink in your mind.

Four months into the season, it looks like Raisa Andreeva is going to be toting some poop bags around in her luggage before too long. Her daughter celebrated her 17th birthday on Monday with the sort of win she has swiftly become known for. 

Just when it looks like her (usually much more experienced) opponent has seized control, and the ghosts of narratives about inexperience and immaturity are becoming a little less nebulous, Andreeva looks down at her shoelaces, has a little chat with herself and vanquishes them.

She doesn’t just recover. She storms back.

Andreeva, 17, has already developed a reputation for comebacks (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

This time, Jasmine Paolini, the 28-year-old from Italy, got the full Andreeva. Paolini, the world No 13, served for the first set at 5-3, then found herself on the receiving end of a flurry of hard, flat backhands and the steady determination that belies her age. Roughly 15 minutes later, Andreeva was stealing the first set in a tiebreaker. Give it another 30, and it was a…