{"id":668696,"date":"2026-07-01T22:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/668696\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T22:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:23:11","slug":"mirra-andreevas-wimbledon-hopes-dashed-by-resurgent-krejcikova-wimbledon-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/668696\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirra Andreeva\u2019s Wimbledon hopes dashed by resurgent Krejcikova | Wimbledon 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four women in the post-1968 Open era have won singles titles on the slow red clay of Roland Garros and \u00adWimbledon\u2019s lightning-fast grass before their 20th birthdays. As Mirra Andreeva, the 19-year-old winner of last month\u2019s French Open<\/a>, walked on to Centre Court here on Wednesday to face Barbora Krejcikova \u2013 already a winner of both European grand slams \u2013 she had fair hopes of joining Maureen Connolly, Evonne Goolagong, Chris Evert and Steffi Graf on that list.<\/p>\n

Andreeva left with those hopes extinguished after a hard-fought three-set success for Krejcikova \u2013 the 2024 champion here<\/a> \u2013 4-6, 7-5, 6-4, but with her reputation as a scrapper and shot-maker much enhanced. She showed many of the attributes she will need to succeed here in the years to come.<\/p>\n

The midsummer switch from clay to grass is tricky enough at the best of times, although a run to the quarter-finals last year was \u00adevidence the surface should hold few fears for Andreeva. Against a player with a champion\u2019s attitude to match her own, however, it proved more \u00addifficult still. This was a contest that remained in the \u00adbalance until the final net-cord winner that got Krejcikova over the line after two-and-three-quarter hours.<\/p>\n

In an astonishing ninth game in the deciding set Krejcikova served for the win at 5-3. She had hauled herself back from a set down, having been largely outplayed by her younger opponent for the first set-and-a-half, before finding her rhythm and range on forehand to carve out the break required to level the match.<\/p>\n

With victory close enough to touch, she raced to 40-0, saw her first match point after offering up an easy overhead to Andreeva and then watched in despair as a forehand hit the cord, hit it again on the way back \u2013 and dropped on her side of the court. The double-fault that followed felt almost inevitable.<\/p>\n

Three more match points came and went as Andreeva threw caution to the wind and found the lines with a series of forehands, including one, on the evidence of the Close Call replay, that was a millimetre away from being her last shot of the match. Her resilience was rewarded as \u00adKrejcikova sent a weak second wide on the seventh advantage of the game.<\/p>\n

It felt like a potential turning point, with the final set now back on serve and surely heading for a 10-point tie-break, only for Krejcikova to summon a final effort and get the decisive break in the next game. Andreeva hurled her racket from the baseline to her chair as her desperate attempt to get the Czech\u2019s net-cord back into play sailed long.<\/p>\n

Barbora Krejcikova enjoys her hard-fought win in the second round on Wednesday. Photograph: Neil Hall\/EPA<\/p>\n

\u201cThe atmosphere was great and we\u2019ve been fighting for almost three hours,\u201d Krejcikova said. \u201cWhat a match. I think this is the fifth time I\u2019ve played with Mirra and it\u2019s always been a huge fight. She is such a young and unique player, she has everything in front of her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really happy that we were able to put on a great show and that we were fighting until the final point, and I\u2019m extremely proud that I\u2019ve managed to win on this beautiful Centre Court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krejcikova has dropped from a high of No 2 in the world in 2022 to a current ranking of 38, but will hope to build on Wednesday\u2019s win to return closer to her previous lofty status.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s definitely very special,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve been through a lot with injuries and also in my personal life in the last couple of months. It was really hard to get through with all the emotions and everything that happened. But I put in a lot of work and dedication every single day and try to go day by day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andreeva was in tears in the post-match media conference, still \u00adstruggling to accept she had let the match slip. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take some time,\u201d she said, having needed 30 \u00adseconds to compose herself after being asked how difficult it is to \u00adprocess the emotions after such a narrow defeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe played well,\u201d she said. \u201cShe\u2019s a tricky opponent, especially on grass. She changes the rhythm a lot. The slices and drop shots, here they stay low, they don\u2019t bounce. I\u2019ve had some trouble with that, as well, [and] a lot of mistakes today. She played well, but I felt like I could have also played better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt as soon as I won that [ninth] game, I had a lot of great chances to make the score even with my serve. I felt like yes, it could have been a turning point. As you can see, it didn\u2019t work and it wasn\u2019t the turning point in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four women in the post-1968 Open era have won singles titles on the slow red clay of Roland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-668696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668696","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=668696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}