PARIS — With the insouciance of a 17-year-old having the time of her life here, Mirra Andreeva says she and her coach work out a game plan before a tennis match — and then she forgets all about it, preferring to just wing it.
Seems to be working out fine so far: The unseeded Russian is the youngest Grand Slam semifinalist in more than a quarter century.
Playing in only her sixth major tournament, Andreeva got past an ill No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4 at the French Open on Wednesday. On Thursday, Andreeva goes up against another surprising player: No. 12 Jasmine Paolini, a 28-year-old Italian player who reached her first major semifinal by defeating No. 4 Elena Rybakina 6-2, 4-6, 6-4.
“I always play the way I want to play. We have a plan with my coach for the match, but after I forget everything, and when I play a match, I don’t have any thoughts in my head,” said the 38th-ranked Andreeva, who is based in Cannes, France, and coached by 1994 Wimbledon champion Conchita Martinez. “So maybe I would say that my strength could be that I just play how I want to play and I do whatever I want to do.”
Words many parents of a teenagers have heard before.
The other matchup Thursday will be No. 1 Iga Swiatek against No. 3 Coco Gauff. Swiatek is seeking her fifth Grand Slam title and fourth in Paris; Gauff won the US Open in September and was the runner-up to Swiatek at Roland Garros in 2022. Both won singles quarterfinals on Tuesday.
Gauff, with Katerina Siniakova, and Paolini, with Sara Errani, also are in the semifinals in doubles; Andreeva withdrew from that event before her quarterfinal scheduled for Wednesday.
Andreeva’s success at her age is not unprecedented, but it’s been a while.
She is the youngest Grand Slam semifinalist since Martina Hingis at age 16 in 1997. You have to go back farther to find a younger player who eliminated a woman ranked No. 1 or 2 at Roland Garros: 1990, when Monica Seles — like Hingis, now a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame — was 16 when she beat Steffi Graf in the final.
“I would say that I am almost like a normal teenager, because I still have to do my school that I don’t like to do. I watch a lot of TV series in my spare time. I watch Netflix. I sometimes spend too much time on my Instagram,” Andreeva said. “But maybe what makes me a little different is that, I don’t know if I can say that I’m mature, but I feel myself a mature person, and I feel that I know what I’m doing.”
So even…
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