When your dream finally comes true, dream bigger
Amid the flash of fame, the payload of money, the summiting of a mountain and an icon and history itself, Bianca Andreescu is also unquestionably 19 years old. Like, she’s excited about her mom getting her own Buzzfeed post. She says of appearing on Jimmy Fallon after her U.S. Open win, “I didn’t, like, think he was a real person before meeting him.” She thinks Jennifer Lawrence should play her in the movie, if there is a movie. Her hometown of Mississauga might even honour her in some way. She is psyched.
“Damn, if that happens, that would be so crazy,” said Andreescu, four days after she became the first Canadian tennis player to ever win a singles Slam title. “I was not expecting any of this, but I could get used to it.”
We might have to, as well. Andreescu’s U.S. Open title win over Serena
Williams on Saturday was the end of her relative anonymity, but the start of much more. This Canadian kid sits atop the tennis world for the moment, and she has earned every bit of it. But she is finding out what comes with this particular throne.
“Having my own hashtag?” Andreescu said in front of a banner at the Aviva National Tennis Centre at York University with #SheTheNorth splashed next to Tennis Canada logos. “If someone said I would, a couple of years ago, I would not have believed them. But what’s happening in Canada in sports is pretty historical.”
We have never had an individual sports star like this. Mike Weir was 32 when he won the Masters in 2003, and it was the culmination of his golf life. Andreescu is at the beginning. This year, she’s compiled a 45-4 record that has launched her to No. 5 in the world; aside from two matches in which she had to retire with a shoulder injury, she hasn’t lost a match since March 1. That’s 24 in a row, including five matches against Top 10 players, and she’s 8-0 against the Top 10 this year.
So the greats are dissecting her power, her creativity, her unteachable poise, and it’s possible Bianca Andreescu is the best tennis player in the world right now. This really was history. After topping out at 152nd in the world last year, when did this become possible for her?
“It would have to be after I played Venus Williams (in a three-set win in Auckland, New Zealand in January),” Andreescu said. “I think that’s the moment of my awakening, I guess … and then Indian Wells came around (in March), and that’s when I actually believed that I can do really, really big things in this sport.”
It has become clear, yes. That shoulder injury all but wiped out April to August, and she still leads the WTA in prize money and is tied for the most tournament wins. Andreescu thinks the layoff helped; during the layoff she worked hard on her fitness and on injury prevention, cleaned up her diet, and further sharpened the visualization-based mental edge that she summoned in New York over and over. That’s her truly special gift.
And it has all pulled the country along. An average of 3.4 million Canadians watched her 6-3, 7-5 win over Serena; that’s more than the entire American audience, despite it being the second-most watched U.S. Open final in the 10 years ESPN has had the rights, behind only DjokovicFederer in 2015.
So every piece of her is a piece of a nascent Andreescu legend that will be examined and burnished. What song was she listening to before she went on the court to go will-to-will with the greatest women’s player ever? “Hot Girl Summer,” whose lyrics are decidedly not safe for the workplace. Did she get a message from Drake, which she had asked for on Fallon’s Tonight Show? She did, and read it aloud. She mentioned that Serena came up to her in the locker room afterward and told her she was going to be a very good player, along with some other kind words. Did she celebrate? She ate delicious bad food and went on TV and barely slept and flew home in a private jet and planned to end the threeday fun with old friends Wednesday night.
Of the prospect of a parade, she said, “Yeah, that would be really cool.” Right now she is perfect. She feels, right now, like she was born for this.
Nothing is inevitable, of course. She said when Serena rallied from 1-5 to 5-5 in the second set she focused on her breathing, on putting the ball in the court, because “I was going for too much. I was too excited because I was literally one game away from winning the tournament and it was hard not to focus on that.I’m just really glad with how I managed those two games at the end because I think if we’d gone to three sets it would have been another story.”
There will be more moments like that. There will be leverage points, doubts, pressure, expectations, fame, money and all of the complicating factors of tennis celebrity. And she will have to prove it all again, over and over, because that’s the game. Andreescu says she is aiming to qualify for the eightplayer WTA Finals in Shenzhen, China, in late October; she figured she can reach the top three by year’s end. She says she wants it all.
“Yeah, I have pretty big expectations for myself,” Andreescu says. “I think it’s just me striving to do better as a player and as a person. I think what really gets me going is just to create history and win as many Grand Slams as possible, become No. 1 in the world. Like my mom always says to me, don’t forget who you are, and dream big to get big. And I think I’ve been doing that for a pretty long time now.”
She is 19 years old, and the world is there to be taken. Here she goes.
“Like my mom always says to me, don’t forget who you are, and dream big to get big. And I think I’ve been doing that for a pretty long time now.” BIANCA ANDREESCU