Andreeva becomes youngest Grand Slam semifinalist in 27 years

Seventeen-year-old Mirra Andreeva made recent history at Roland Garros on Wednesday with a 6-7(5), 6-4, 6-4 upset of Australian Open champion Aryna Sabalenka to become the youngest Grand Slam semifinalist in nearly three decades.

Roland Garros: Scores | Draws

Andreeva battled past an ailing Sabalenka, who received a first-set medical timeout and subsequent other attention later in the match that lasted 2 hours and 29 minutes. Andreeva ultimately beat the World No.2 Sabalenka her for the first time in three career meetings on one of the game’s biggest stages. Andreeva is the youngest woman to reach a Grand Slam semifinal since former No. 1 Martina Hingis, who was 16 when she reached both the Roland Garros and US Open semifinals in 1997.

Sabalenka hadn’t lost a set in a Grand Slam match this year before facing Andreeva. In fact, she had lost more than four games only two of the 22 sets in that 11-match streak. But Andreeva became the youngest player to defeat either the World No.1 or No.2 in a Grand Slam event since a then-16-year-old Jelena Dokic stunned Hingis in the first round at Wimbledon in 1999. Andreeva is the youngest to do it at the French Open since Monica Seles, also 16, defeated Stefanie Graf in Paris’ 1990 final.

Here’s more from Andreeva’s feat:

6: Sabalenka had reached the semifinals or better at the last six Grand Slam events she played, dating back to a third-round loss to Italy’s Camila Giorgi at the 2022 French Open.

5: Andreeva is through to the semifinals in just her fifth Grand Slam main-draw appearance. Andreeva is the third player to reach her first tour-level semifinal at Roland Garros after Argentinians Clarisa Fernandez (2002) and Nadia Podoroska (2020) during the Open Era. She is the first player to do this at any Grand Slam event since Great Britain’s Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open, who went on the to win the title.

4: Andreeva was 0-3 against Top 5 players entering Wednesday’s match. She had previously lost twice to Sabalenka — in Madrid in each of the last two years — and was also beaten by Elena Rybakina in Beijing last fall.

3: Andreeva has now beaten three Top 10 players in her career, all of them this year. She also beat Ons Jabeur en route to the fourth round of the Australian Open, and Marketa Vondrousova in Madrid.

2: Andreeva’s win ensues a first-time Grand Slam semifinalist out of the bottom half. She will face Italy’s Jasmine Paolini for a spot in the women’s final. Paolini defeated No.4 seed Elena Rybakina in Wednesday’s other quarterfinal. Andreeva defeated Paolini in their only previous meeting, which was in Madrid.

1: Andreeva is bidding to become the first player to ever reach her first tour-level singles final at Roland Garros.