Mirra Andreeva and Erika Andreeva will face each other for the first time at the 2024 Wuhan Open, and they already have a plan for the prize money they will win.
In the past two decades, tennis fans have enjoyed many sibling rivalries, especially on the WTA Tour, where the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, dominated for a very long time.
Now, there are also plenty of sister duos, and the two most prominent are probably the Andreeva sisters, Mirra and Erika, and the Fruhvirtova sisters, Linda and Brenda.
These players are still very young, so it's impossible to say whether they will form a rivalry like the Williams sisters did, but Mirra and Erika Andreeva will write the first chapter at the 2024 Wuhan Open.
As World No. 19, Mirra entered the main draw directly and is also among the seeded players, seeded 16th at the WTA 1000 tournament. Her older sister Erika played in the qualifying and lost in the final round to Lesia Tsurenko, but she got into the main draw as a lucky loser.
In the first round, Mirra outplayed Xiyu Wang in two sets 7-6(5), 6-3, while Erika bested Dayana Yastremska 7-5, 6-4 to set up the second-round match between two Andreeva sisters.
It will be their first official WTA Tour-level meeting, and naturally, Mirra Andreeva, who is the more successful of the two sisters and was compared even to the likes of Martina Hingis, was asked about the matchup.
She revealed that they had played practice matches before, and the last time they did, which was a long time ago, she didn't win, so she called the upcoming matchup a nightmare.
"Well, last time we played like a practice match, not just some exercises, like the real match, I think it was maybe three to five years ago, something like that. I didn't win (smiling). Yeah, I don't know."
"Of course, as I said before, it would be like a nightmare to play against her because it would also be a pretty weird match I think because she would know what I would do on the court, and I know what she does on the court."
"I think it's going to be fun, of course, for the people who are watching, but it's going to be really stressful for the both of us I think."
Mirra also revealed that the sisters have decided to split the prize money regardless of who wins the match. Both players are guaranteed $20,714 for reaching the second round, while the one who makes it to the third round and wins this match will get $36,568.
In practice, that should mean that the $15,854 difference between making the second and third rounds should be split between the sisters. Regardless of the winner, both should increase their bank accounts by $28,641 after this second-round match.
One of the two that makes the third round will have a chance to significantly increase that number, as reaching the quarter-final in Wuhan pays $73,193 while winning the title will earn the champion $525,115.
"But yeah, we decided that we're going to split the prize money for the second round. Whoever wins just goes forward. We're going to just split the prize money. But yeah, of course I'm curious to see who's going to win tomorrow. It's going to be a nervous match, for sure. For my parents, especially (smiling)."