Mirra Andreeva may be a Roland Garros semifinalist, a reliable fixture in the second week of the Mutua Madrid Open and a two-time WTA titlist on clay, but she still has a “love\/hate relationship” with the surface — as she revealed after defeating qualifier Dalma Galfi 6-3, 6-2 on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Madrid: Scores<\/a> | Draws<\/a> | Order of play<\/a><\/p>\n “I don’t mind clay, but I was just complaining to [Diana Shnaider] on the court that she said ‘you’re whole tank top is dirty,’ Andreeva said to press after her singles and doubles win, partnered with Shnaider. “I just don’t have enough clothes with me to, every time, give it to laundry.<\/p>\n “Tonight I have a washing day because I have two tank tops left, and I need to catch up a little bit. I don’t mind playing on clay, it’s one of my favorite surfaces, but that’s the downside of that.”<\/p>\n As Andreeva acknowledged, though, she’s “playing not bad” on clay at the moment. Her defeat of Galfi put her into the Madrid last 16 for a fourth straight year, and extended her clay record in 2026 to 9-1. Though the contest wasn’t as straightforward as the scoreline suggests — she needed to come from an early break down in both sets, and all but one game of the second set went to deuce — it showed off the teenager’s natural affinity for clay-court tennis.<\/p>\n “Clay is such a special surface,” she said in her on-court interview. “You really have to adjust your game.”<\/p>\n That was especially the case against No. 117-ranked Galfi, who blended finely-cut drop shots with injections of huge pace on her forehand side, and rarely gave Andreeva a look at the same pace for two balls running. But Andreeva is a stellar exponent of a similar style, and her problem-solving abilitues ultimately proved superior.<\/p>\n In the first set, Andreeva’s comeback from 2-0 down was anchored by superb serving — she conceded just two further points behind her delivery as she swept through six of the next seven games. The second set was a tussle all the way, though, featuring a number of brilliant all-court exchanges in which both players sought to out-manoeuvre each other.<\/p>\n Galfi found a pair of terrific forehand winners to break for 2-1, but for the rest of the set Andreeva found success by luring the Hungarian into over-pressing. The last five games of the match all went to at least one deuce — there were nine in total across them — and Andreeva won each of them on a mixtake by Galfi, who racked up 47 unforced errors in total.<\/p>\n “A lot of games we were fighting and we had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of advantages for both of us,” Andreeva said to press. “I’m happy that I was able to close the match.”<\/p>\n Andreeva will bid to reach her third straight Madrid quarterfinal against a third straight Hungarian opponent. Anna Bondar booked her place in a WTA 1000 fourth round for the first time with a 7-6(3), 6-1 defeat of 18-year-old wild card Laura Samson, and will go into her meeting with Andreeva with the head-to-head advantage. Their only previous meeting was in the 2023 Lausanne second round, which Bondar won 7-6(3), 6-3.<\/p>\n Lausanne: Bondar defeats Mirra Andreeva to book quarterfinal spot<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mirra Andreeva may be a Roland Garros semifinalist, a reliable fixture in the second week of the Mutua…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-630455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}