The world No. 1 beat Rybakina in the Indian Wells final<\/a>. She beat Gauff in the Miami final. Both matches went three sets and turned on just a couple of points. As the hard courts gave way to clay and then grass, Gauff and \u015awi\u0105tek, the defending French Open and Wimbledon champions, were waiting for Sabalenka, still hunting an organic major title, and Rybakina, who had surged through the first months of the year to have a realistic shot at grabbing the world No. 1 ranking, to snap at their heels.<\/p>\n Someone appears to have forgotten to give that memo to the rest of tennis.<\/p>\n Three months later, as women\u2019s tennis swings round to hard courts again, it also has two new Grand Slam champions, who land as relative newcomers to casual fans, even though they have far more experience and pedigree than their ages might suggest.<\/p>\n Linda Noskov\u00e1, 21, captured the Wimbledon title five weeks after Mirra Andreeva, 19, won the French Open.<\/p>\n Noskov\u00e1 and Andreeva were too good not to win a major title before long. Noskov\u00e1, from the Czech Republic, broke into the top 40 in 2023 and has risen steadily ever since; Andreeva announced herself to the tour when she was just 15 and won two WTA 1000 titles<\/a>, the rung below the Grand Slams, last year. For a time, she was the only teenager in the top 100, an inversion of the recent past in women\u2019s tennis.<\/p>\n \n Mirra Andreeva, 19, was the youngest French Open women\u2019s champion since Monica Seles in 1992. (Thibault Camus \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n They are also useful foils for understanding the way their games propelled them to those titles. They both have a killer serve \u2014 Noskov\u00e1\u2019s is a true buzzsaw \u2014 which is more important for winning at the highest level than it used to be. Noskov\u00e1\u2019s groundstrokes are similarly incisive, while Andreeva\u2019s are more probing, though she can crack her backhand down the line as well as just about anyone.<\/p>\n Most importantly, they both play multi-dimensional tennis. Noskov\u00e1\u2019s drop shots, slices and low, quick steps are just as crucial as her more powerful weapons. Andreeva\u2019s defense and touch are just as crucial as her serve. And players up and down the tour who want to succeed \u2014 and in some cases, have already done just about everything there is to do in tennis \u2014 are embracing this line of thinking.<\/p>\n \u015awi\u0105tek has sought to emphasize the controlled part of the controlled aggressiveness that made her an all-conquering world No. 1; Sabalenka has added deftness and dexterity<\/a> to what was an all-power game. Pure baseline power can still run hot, but point-and-shoot tennis has less room for error if groundstrokes start to spray. Having tools to lean on when plan A is not working is now a requirement rather than a nice-to-have.<\/p>\n Questions remain. One is whether all this can hold up. After her loss at Wimbledon to an inspired Naomi Osaka<\/a>, who embraced the movement required to succeed on grass as she never had this year, Sabalenka told the BBC: \u201cLet\u2019s see if they can do it consistently.\u201d<\/p>\n She could have added, \u201cand on hard courts\u201d and been on solid ground.<\/p>\n The other is whether one of those style evolutions that happens in sports every so often, when one approach proves more effective than another, is truly underway \u2014 or whether the characteristics of clay and grass exaggerate the advantages of one and blunt those of another. Additionally, neither Noskov\u00e1 nor Andreeva had to defeat one of the established four on the way to their titles \u2014 but that was because they either lost earlier than expected, or just were on the other side of the draw.<\/p>\n The answer is likely somewhere in between. \u015awi\u0105tek and Serena Williams, 44, are the only active women\u2019s players to win a Grand Slam singles tournament on all three surfaces. Gauff\u2019s Wimbledon semifinal run suggested that she is finding her way on grass after two years in the wilderness<\/a>. It\u2019s entirely possible that the established power quartet could reign supreme from the start of the summer hard-court swing, all the way to early spring next year.<\/p>\n And yet, there is a growing sense that big serves and big forehands can only take a player so far \u2014 in part because the players steeped in court craft who have succeeded these past months have largely done so by emphasizing those factors, adding steel and reliability to their core shots so that their palette of variety has a consistent canvas.<\/p>\n Marta Kostyuk used a similar approach to win two consecutive tournaments and 16 straight matches on clay before she lost to Andreeva in the French Open semifinals. Iva Jovi\u0107, just 18 and already the world No. 16, has a controlled aggressiveness and fleet-footed movement that calls \u015awi\u0105tek to mind<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Mirra-Andreeva-French-Open-First-Grand-Slam-Title-scaled.jpg\")
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