After beating Leylah Fernandez in the Madrid semifinals on Tuesday, then-18-year-old Mirra Andreeva said her birthday wish was to get a new pair of high heels.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday she turned 19, and her wish came true.<\/p>\n
“I was really not expecting that gift,” she admitted. “But my agent, Juan, he was very thoughtful and he got me a pair of high heels. I already have a video on my phone [of] how I walk in them. So yeah, I was extremely happy to receive that gift yesterday. I’ll try to go out somewhere, maybe next week, to wear them and feel pretty.”<\/p>\n
Then on Thursday, Andreeva’s birthday week got even sweeter when she beat red-hot Hailey Baptiste 6-4, 7-6 (8) to reach her first career Mutua Madrid Open final.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Andreeva is the first teenager to reach three WTA 1000 finals, and she’s now won 12 matches on clay this season, the most on the WTA Tour Driven by Mercedes-Benz. She will move up to No. 7 in the PIF WTA Rankings next week regardless of what happens in the final.<\/p>\n
Though she’s still one of the youngest players on the WTA Tour — and the youngest in the Top 15 of the PIF WTA Rankings — Andreeva feels like she’s grown and matured considerably in the past year, and her veteran-like demeanor served her well in a back-and-forth second set against Baptiste.<\/p>\n
“As funny as it sounds, I feel like I’m getting older, and I also feel like, in my mind, things are changing a little bit,” Andreeva told reporters. “I also feel like I’m thinking a little bit differently about some certain things. I don’t know, today I just felt like this was the only thing that I had to do on the court, and I really tried to focus on that and do everything I can to just not react at anything that was happening.<\/p>\n
“I was not reacting a lot on the points, or on the games that I was winning. I felt like that was helping me to stay calmer, and also kind of saving energy a little bit.”<\/p>\n
Andreeva will play for her third title of 2026 on Saturday, after winning Adelaide in January and Linz earlier this month. She’ll play either Marta Kostyuk or Anastasia Potapova in the championship match.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After beating Leylah Fernandez in the Madrid semifinals on Tuesday, then-18-year-old Mirra Andreeva said her birthday wish was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-560233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-text","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}