Russian teenager advances to semi-finals | The Arkansas Democratic Gazette

PARIS — With the carefreeness of a 17-year-old having fun in Paris, Mirra Andreeva says she and her coach come up with a game plan before a tennis match — then she forgets all about it, preferring it just wing it.

It seems to be going well so far: the unseeded Russian is the youngest semi-finalist at a Grand Slam in more than a quarter of a century.

Playing only her sixth major tournament, Andreeva defeated ailing No. 2 seed Aryna Sabalenka 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4 at Roland Garros on Wednesday. Next, on Thursday, Andreeva will face another surprising player: No. 12 Jasmine Paolini, a 28-year-old Italian who reached her first major semifinal by beating No. 4 Elena Rybakina 6-2, 4-6, 6- 4. .

“I always play the way I want. We have a plan with my coach for the match, but afterwards I forget everything, and when I play a match I don't have any ideas in mind,” said the 38th-ranked Andreeva. , based in Cannes and coached by 1994 Wimbledon champion Conchita Martinez. “So maybe I would say my strength could be that I play the way I want to play and I do what I want to do.”

Words that many parents of teenagers have probably heard at home.

The other clash on Thursday will pit No. 1 Iga Swiatek against No. 3 Coco Gauff. Swiatek aims for her fifth Grand Slam title and fourth in Paris; Gauff won the US Open last September and was runner-up to Swiatek at Roland Garros in 2022. They both won the singles quarterfinals on Tuesday.

Gauff, with Katerina Siniakova, and Paolini, with Sara Errani, are also through to the doubles semifinals; Andreeva withdrew from this event ahead of her quarterfinal scheduled for Wednesday.

Andreeva's success at her age is not unprecedented. But it's been a while.

She is the youngest semi-finalist in a Grand Slam since Martina Hingis, at 16, in 1997. You have to go back even further to find a younger player who eliminated a woman ranked No. 1 or 2 at Roland Garros. Open: 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 I'm almost like a normal teenager, because I still have to do my studies which I don't like doing. I watch a lot of TV series in my free time. I watch Netflix. I sometimes also spend a lot of time on my Instagram,” said Andreeva. “But maybe what makes me a little different is that I don't know if I can say I'm mature, but I feel like a mature person and I feel like I know what I'm doing. “

So while she and Martinez review strategy in advance, those tactics aren't necessarily implemented.

According to Andreeva, she understands things plan by plan.

“I decide, 'Well, what should I do? Should I go down the line or should I cross? Should I do a drop shot. Should I do a lob?'” said Andreeva, whose sister , 19, Erika, lost to Sabalenka in the first round last week. “Sometimes it’s not really good, because I have a lot of decisions on my mind.”

She has yet to win a title of any kind at the tour level and is competing in only her fifth Slam tournament.

Sabalenka, meanwhile, is a two-time champion at the Australian Open, notably in January, and won the first 23 Grand Slam sets she played in 2024 before losing two in a row to Andreeva. Suffering from a stomach illness, Sabalenka was visited several times by a coach and a doctor and often clutched her abdomen.

There were many momentum shifts, and the outcome was uncertain until the very last game, when Andreeva broke with a beautiful lob that Sabalenka didn't even move to try to reach.

“If we look back,” Andreeva said later, “I wouldn’t expect to be (in) the semifinals.”

Had Sabalenka and Rybakina won, it would have been only the second time in the professional era, which began in 1968, that the women's 1-4 seeds all advanced to the semifinals in Paris. The other was in 1992.

But Paolini and Andreeva stopped him.

With Jannik Sinner in the men's semi-final, it is the first time that an Italian woman and an Italian have both appeared in the final four of the same Grand Slam tournament in the same year. It's quite a moment for their country in tennis: on Monday, Sinner will become the first man to occupy the top spot in the ATP rankings.

The men's semifinals take place on Friday, when Sinner faces Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev takes on Casper Ruud. Zverev reached the final four in Paris for the fourth year in a row, beating Alex de Minaur 6-4, 7-6 (5), 6-4 on the night.

Paolini exited in the first or second round in each of her first 16 Grand Slam appearances before advancing to the fourth round of the Australian Open. Now she has taken two steps beyond.

For Paolini, Thursday is the chance for a rematch against Andreeva, who is more than a decade younger but won their meeting last month at the Madrid Open on clay.

“She's so young but she's so good mentally. And she can defend very well. She can serve well,” Paolini said. “It’s going to be a tough match, but we’re in the semi-final so there’s no chance of easy matches.”