BIANCA BATTLES BACK TO KEEP HOT RUN GOING
Canadian teen struggled in first set before topping Mertens to reach U.S. Open semis
The runaway train that is Bianca Andreescu’s rookie season continues to roll.
The 19-year-old Canadian, playing in her first Grand Slam quarter-final, advanced to the semis of the U.S. Open on Wednesday night in a comeback three-set victory (3-6, 6-2, 6-3) over Belgium’s Elise Mertens.
The result puts another notch on Andreescu’s remarkable streak of 22 straight victories in completed matches, a run that dates to late February.
“This is, honestly, so crazy,” she said on court after the match. “Is this real life?”
It is, actually.
Through 10 days in New York, Andreescu had flashed a powerful all-court game that had much of the tennis world swooning over her ability to make all kinds of shots. She had also shown a tendency to make key shots in high-leverage points.
But much of that was missing early on Wednesday, although the steady play from Mertens, a 23-year-old who has been ranked inside the top 20 for several years, had something to do with that.
The Canadian made a handful of errors in her second service game of the match — a blown volley at the net, a shanked backhand — and Mertens got the break she needed. Andreescu, normally possessed of a strong return game, was unable to apply pressure on the Belgian, who took the first set routinely.
The second set started better for Andreescu, who was able to quickly break Mertens’ serve, but she couldn’t hold serve in the following game to press the advantage. Mertens took particular advantage of the Canadian’s second serve, winning those points more often than not.
Andreescu, though, turned things around halfway through the second set, breaking Mertens again with a rocket of a forehand and then holding serve herself. It was not a surprise that she would not go down without taking some big swings. She won three straight games to clinch the second set, winning 17 of 22 points in that stretch. This was the power game for which she has quickly become known.
That momentum did not carry over to the deciding set, and Andreescu was noticeably frustrated. Her usual shouts of “come on” after good shots sounded more plaintive after poor ones. Through six games of the third set, she had failed to deliver the kill shot on four break-point opportunities.
The kill shot eventually came. On her seventh break chance of the set, Andreescu smoked a backhand return deep that Mertens couldn’t handle; 5-3, and the Canadian would serve for the match.
It would end with an anticlimactic finish. A routine hold, and the kid from Mississauga, Ont., was into the U.S. Open semifinals on Thursday.
Andreescu’s year had already been one with very few comparables in Canadian tennis. She ended last season well outside the top 150 in the WTA rankings, but in January she came out firing, winning three qualifiers in Auckland, New Zealand, and then reeled off four straight wins, including over players such as Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams, before falling in the final to Julia Gorges.
She won three more qualifiers to get into the main draw at the Australian Open, where she lost in the second round, and then entered a second-tier event in which she won five straight to claim the winner’s trophy.
A few weeks later, Andreescu notched her first WTA victory at the Indian Wells tournament in California, an event one notch below a Grand Slam. Her run included five match wins over seeded players.
That has been the defining feature of her year: victories over players who are much higher than her in the WTA rankings. The vast majority of newcomers on the WTA Tour pick up wins in the early rounds of tournaments, but lose when they run into seeded opponents. Tennis is very much tilted toward the haves rather than the have-nots, as the highest-ranked players get to cruise through the early rounds against players seeded well below them.
Andreescu has flipped that normal pattern on its head in her rookie season, beating seeded players and former Grand Slam champions with shocking regularity. Of all the impressive stats she has piled up, the 7-0 record against players ranked in the top 10 is at the top of the list.
This U.S. Open, though, hadn’t even required that kind of heavy lifting. She beat Katie Volynets, a teenage American wild card entry in the first round, before defeating Kirsten Flipkens, a veteran Belgian doubles specialist, in the second round.
Then things became more daunting. A rematch with Wozniacki, on the grand stage of Ashe, did not prove to be much of a hurdle, despite the Danish star’s long resume.
Then in the fourth round she beat unseeded American Taylor Townsend, and her funky game. Andreescu dropped a set for the first time in the tournament, but she fought back, saying later that she was particularly pleased to have kept her cool in front of a lively, hostile and, if we’re honest, probably quite drunk, U.S. Open late-night crowd.
Then came Mertens, the 25th seed who had yet to lose a set through four rounds, but one who had faced a much easier path than her Canadian opponent.
Top seeds have fallen all over the place at this tournament. Next up is Belinda Bencic, the 13th seed from Switzerland who beat defending champ Naomi Osaka in the third round.
It is a winnable match. But for Bianca Andreescu, it feels like they all are.