The highly talented Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva was named this year's WTA Newcomer of the Year thanks to her meteoric rise that culminated with a place in the world's Top 60.
Between 2022 and 2023, no player on the women's tour enjoyed a seismic climb into the Top 100 than Mirra Andreeva. A year ago, the 16-year-old was World No. 405 but soared as high as No. 46 (career-best ranking) during a remarkable 2023 season.
Andreeva is the fifth Russian to win this WTA award category, following the footsteps of Anna Kournikova (1996), Svetlana Kuznetsova (2002), Maria Sharapova (2003), and Daria Saville (2015) - who played under the Russian flag for six years before switching her nationality.
It has even escaped tennis fans' minds that Andreeva was plying her trade on junior events at the start of last season. She began the year on a high note, reaching the 2023 Australian Open girls' final, where she lost to compatriot Alina Korneeva.
Although Andreeva made her WTA main draw debut last year at the Jasmin Open, it took her just a few months before she burst onto the scene on the WTA stage in 2023. After winning back-to-back W60 ITF events in Switzerland in April, tournament organizers in Madrid showed faith in the teenager's talent.
She was offered a wild card to play in one the most prestigious WTA events on the calendar, and Andreeva fully repaid them with an incredible run to the fourth round. During the week in Madrid, she defeated 2021 US Open finalist Leylah Fernandez and scored successive Top 20 wins over Beatriz Haddad Maia and Magda Linette.
Andreeva used that dream week in the Spanish capital as a springboard to even bigger scalps. She qualified for her first senior Grand Slam tournament at Roland Garros, where she impressed in her run to the third round.
At Wimbledon, Andreeva came through the rigors of qualifying before going to headline the second week for the first time in her embryonic tennis career. Her most significant victory was a retirement win over 2021 French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova, whom she would beat again at the China Open in October.
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