Mirra Andreeva reached the 2024 Ningbo Open final after Karolina Muchova was forced to retire from their semi-final match.
Not many players will have good memories of the 2024 Ningbo Open. It all started already before the first ball even hit at the event, as many players started withdrawing shortly after the draw was made.
The first-seeded Jasmine Paolini withdrew from the tournament, and the second-seeded Qinwen Zheng withdrew as well, as did the third-seeded Emma Navarro.
Those were also joined by Ekaterina Alexandrova, Anastasia Potapova, and Yafan Wang, so there were almost as many qualifiers and lucky losers as there were players that qualified for the tournament, thanks to their ranking.
Those withdrawals, however, didn't stop after the tournament started. In the quarter-final, the fourth-seeded Barbora Krejcikova retired against Mirra Andreeva, and another Czech player retired against the teenage prodigy also in the semi-final.
On top of that, in the other semi-final, Paula Badosa was forced to retire from her match against Daria Kasatkina, meaning that both finalists got into the final of the WTA 500 tournament through a retirement.
That's certainly something that neither the players nor the organizers or the fans wanted to see, but unfortunately, that is also the reality of the sport, especially ten months into the grueling season.
The semi-final match between these two talented players was certainly something that the crowd in Ningbo wanted to enjoy, but they got only 45 minutes of action.
Andreeva had a superb start to the match, winning the first four games while losing only four of the first 20 points. She was the superior player, but Muchova still managed to break back and make it 2-4 from her point of view.
Still, the 17-year-old player was better, also because it seemed like the Czech couldn't play at her best. Andreeva won the first set 6-2, securing an important one-set lead.
She then started the second set by winning the first five points, leading 1-0 and 15-0, and that was when Muchova decided that she couldn't continue in the match, opting to retire.
That means Andreeva advanced into the final of the WTA 500 tournament in Ningbo, which will mark the first WTA 500 final of her tennis career.
Earlier this year, Andreeva became the youngest title winner since Coco Gauff when she triumphed at the WTA 250 event at the Iasi Open, and now, she will have a chance to one-up her first title.
Her final opponent will be Daria Kasatkina, who also got into the final thanks to her opponent's retirement, so both players will probably arrive into the final match rested, which should make up for a great show for the fans in Ningbo.
Andreeva and Kasatkina are also good friends, as the teenage Russian often appears in Kasatkina's YouTube videos, which she produces together with her girlfriend, Natalia Zabiiako, from tournament sites.
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