PARIS—Bent over with her hands covering her face, her knees getting dirtied on the red clay court, Mirra Andreeva was celebrating—processing might be the more appropriate word—how she had finally overcome “so many demons inside” that came with being a teenage tennis phenom.
After bursting onto the scene at 15, Andreeva became a Grand Slam champion at 19 when the Russian ended the run of 114th-ranked Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska with a 6–3, 6–2 victory in the French Open final on Saturday.
“I’ve done a lot of visualizations before. Not just this tournament, but I’ve had dreams, I’ve had a lot of thoughts on how it’s going to happen, if it’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, where,” Andreeva said, still hardly breathing as she talked quickly in true teenage style. “The feeling in real life is so much better than in your dreams.
“I can call myself a Grand Slam champion,” Andreeva added.
The biggest challenges for Andreeva have not been on the court—she already has one of the best attacking baseline games in the sport—it’s been the mental side. And her stubbornness.
“Her attitude is difficult,” said Conchita Martinez, Andreeva’s coach and a former Wimbledon champion. “You tell her something, and maybe she’s not open to listening. … When she works hard and when she listens and she does everything, she has no limits.”
Andreeva acknowledged as much during the trophy ceremony.
“I know I can be a tough cookie sometimes and it’s pretty hard to put up with me,” Andreeva said.
The victory took Andreeva one step further than Martinez, who lost the 2000 French Open final to Mary Pierce.
Pierce presented the winner’s trophy to Andreeva, who became the youngest woman to win the clay-court Grand Slam since Monica Seles was 18 when she claimed her third straight French Open in 1992.
“You’re so young and talented. It’s so annoying,” the 24-year-old Chwalinska told Andreeva.
Andreeva took the unusual step of thanking herself “for believing in myself, always giving my 100 percent, even when it’s tough, trying every day to be better as a person and as a player, believing that I can do this, fighting so many demons inside of me.
“Only I know how tough it was for me,” Andreeva added. “How nervous I was throughout these two weeks.”
Andreeva also thanked her psychologist, who she said was watching from Florida: “Everything that you’ve told me I’ve been trying to use these two weeks.”
