At Roland Garros,
What were you doing when you were 16? Mirra Andreeva, she sticks tempers to players in the world’s top 30 and that does not seem to surprise her unduly. Opposed this Thursday to the young Frenchwoman Diane Parry (20 years old), four years her senior all the same, in the second round of Roland-Garros, the kid with the baby face and the naive smile sends the pressure as she bursts the precocity records .
“I train every day and I work for it. One day or another it had to happen and better sooner than later. I can’t say I’m living a dream, it’s normal, ”she said after bursting into the eyes of the world at the last Madrid tournament, during which she scalped in turn the Canadian Leylah Fernandez, finalist of the US Open in 2021, Beatriz Haddad Maia, seeded number 13 in the tournament, then Magda Linette (seed number 17) before giving in to world number 2 Aryna Sabalenka in the 8th round.
In Paris, this one rode on the qualifications without losing the slightest set, no time to fool around, before composting the return ticket of theAmerican Alison Riske-Amritraj85th in the world, again in two sets (6-2, 6-1) and fifty-six minutes of play.
“She’s still fine!” »
Like his player, whom he has been training in his Cannes academy for more than a year, when the whole Andreeva family decided to settle down in the south of France, Jean-René Lisnard did not have need to pinch yourself to believe it. “When we follow it like me on a daily basis, we are not surprised as the general public can be who discovers it and who says to themselves ‘oh damn, what is this phenomenon? We knew she was capable of beating top players, he analyzes calmly. Before arriving in Madrid she had won two tournaments and was on a streak of 13 straight victories. She arrived launched, in addition she likes big events, not the type to deflate in front of the pressure, the context. »
If he does not hesitate to qualify the kid as a “prodigy”, he did not fall out of the wardrobe either when he saw her play the first time. “It’s not the impressive player who hits bim, bam, boom, but we could see that she had faculties for her age to hold the ball in the field, to feel the game. ” Which pleases Jean- René Lisnard is the mentality of his player. “She is still doing well. You arrive in the morning and you ask her how you are, she always replies ‘fantastic!’. It’s nice because people who are bad, who have this, who have that, who complain, we still meet a lot of them. She is quite the opposite, we are in the presence of someone who is motivated to get up in the morning to go to work. »
It is true that she gives off something radiant wherever she goes, like the different TV sets on which she is increasingly invited. As a fierce competitor, Andreeva quickly understood that this natural bonhomie could also serve her on the pitch: “Everyone plays very well and sometimes it’s when someone is a little less mentally that the difference is made. So the player who tries to stay positive all the time has a better chance of winning,” she explained after Madrid.
Parents who do not encroach on the athlete
Among his other qualities, his coach highlights an extraordinary capacity for learning. This girl is what he calls a “sponge project”. Explanations: “She absorbs everything very quickly and puts all the advice given to her into immediate effect, with her, unlike others, there’s no need to repeat the same thing twice. And as natural selection does a lot on this in this environment, it stands out today. Ah yes, what we haven’t told you yet is that the Andreevas are delivered in pairs. At his side, his 18-year-old older sister, Erika, 121st player in the world, ie 21 ranks ahead of her younger sister, also trains at the Tennis Club Elite Tennis Center in Cannes.
“They get along very well, they encourage each other, they motivate each other, for the moment they are pulling themselves up, as long as it lasts! Even if there is necessarily a little competition between them, I find that it is very healthy between them, ”says Jean-René Lisnard. This is also explained by parents who do everything to put their offspring in the best conditions, hence this move to France to walk in the footsteps of Daniil Medvedev, the best known of the (many) Russian boarders of the Cannes academy, all without ever interfering with the work of the coaches. “They have the intelligence not to encroach on a ground that they do not know, greets Lisnard. For the moment they are in their rightful place, after that there are always things to complain about, but parents who don’t make mistakes don’t exist. »
It remains to be seen whether Mirra Andreeva will succeed in confirming the wildest hopes placed in her. For that, it will be necessary to resist all that this environment pollutes, fame, big contracts, money and the inherent risk either of freaking out and exploding in flight, or of falling into a comfort that can be devastating. “Staying on top, getting used to this strange life, absorbing everything that happens around without letting yourself be eaten, that’s the hallmark of the greatest, agrees the French coach. That’s the invisible part: knowing what they have inside them. That, we will only know with time. “But, from what her coach tells us, her ambitions are “very, very high”, and as “she is a mature and intelligent kid”, we can hope that she is not just a shooting star.