CENTRE COURT, THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB — Mirra Andreeva, the 18-year-old Russian, was determined to cast one of her spells over Wimbledon and turn the All England Club into another of her party spaces.
Belinda Bencic shut it down.
Bencic, the Tokyo Olympic gold medalist from Switzerland who is playing her first season after giving birth to her first child, matched Andreeva shot for shot in a duel of hard, spinning power that turned in the final moments of both sets. It ended with Bencic charging into her first Wimbledons semifinal 7-6(3), 7-6(2), where she will face Iga Świątek.
Bencic’s game, which relies so heavily on her ability to take balls early, often on short hops, isn’t supposed to work on grass. Too many bad bounces, too many balls sliding through the court, too many slices that barely rise off it.
And there were plenty of those from Andreeva, who tried to attack Bencic with her hard, slicing forehands. But Bencic picked up enough of them and turned enough points around her way to snuff out Andreeva’s precocious efforts to put the sport back in teenage hands, something that has become increasingly rare in women’s tennis lately.
“She’s 18 years old and she’s performing at the biggest stage,” Bencic said of Andreeva in her on-court interview.
“I was studying yesterday to figure out what to do.”
A day ago, Andreeva was living it up, wearing a decorated sunhat and holding a sign at a legends match featuring her coach Conchita Martinez. Two days ago, she lived her dream of seeing Roger Federer in the flesh as she won her fourth-round match against Emma Navarro in front of him. It was her Centre Court debut.
On Wednesday, though, she couldn’t come up with the goods when she has so often all year: in those crucial moments when tight matches go one way or the other. She’s likely to have some regrets over how her backhand, one of the best in the game, failed her when she needed it most, albeit against another of the best backhands in the game coming back and sending her on the run over and over.
She played her worst points in the first-set tiebreak, missing two backhands early. One was a sitter from close range. Then she missed two forehands at the end to allow Bencic to take the early edge.
Serving at 4-4 in the second set, Andreeva gave Bencic her chance to serve out the match, when she sent another backhand into the net with the game in the balance. On the next point, Bencic showed her how it is done, jumping on a second serve and thumping her backhand return so deep Andreeva couldn’t catch up with it.
Andreeva, though, hates to leave a good party early. She broke Bencic right back to extend the match, frustrating her with an endless series of forehand slices.
And then came the next tiebreak, and the other of Andreeva’s worst games. Two missed volleys, that gave Bencic a 4-1 lead with her serve, a cushion anyone would sign for. Andreeva tried the forehand slice once more, but it floated long. A double fault gave Bencic four match points.
All she needed was one, finishing it with easy overhead. The Andreeva party was over, but a Swiss one – there have been a bunch of those on this court – was just getting started.
(Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP via Getty Images)
