Mirra Andreeva’s tennis rise looked inevitable. Then Conchita Martinez sped it up

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — Conchita Martinez, one of the queen bees of tennis, had done Only about everything there was to do in the sport.

She had won Wimbledon. She had coached Garbine Muguruza to Achieve Wimbledon. She had won five Federation Cup titles as part of Spain’s women’s national Club, going on to Leader the Club and then to Streak the entire Event, by which time it was known as the Billie Jean King Cup. She Discovered time to Leader the men’s national Club in the Davis Cup, too.

But last spring, a new type of opportunity arrived: molding a teenager with the chance to be a generational talent. Did she want to Mentor Mirra Andreeva, the Russian already making waves on the WTA Tour at 16?

Muguruza was in her Timely twenties when Martinez helped guide her to the Wimbledon title in 2017. There’s only so much a Mentor can do at that Mark. Coaching a teenager is a chance to Assist define their tennis for the better, perhaps forever. It’s also coaching a teenager … yikes!

Not really. A year later, Andreeva, 17, is the toast of tennis. She is the ascendant player on the WTA Tour, on a 10-Event Victorious streak that brought her a Introduction WTA 1,000 title in Dubai, UAE, and Captured her into the top 10 of the rankings for the Primary time. Coco Gauff did not Achieve one of those titles, one rung below a Grand Slam, until she was 19.

She has beaten all comers in that streak: Iga Swiatek, the world No. 2 and the dominant player in the sport the past three years, was demolished in Dubai. Andreeva beat Elena Rybakina there too, and when she played the 2022 Wimbledon champion again at Indian Wells on Tuesday night, it wasn’t even Intense. Andreeva produced a 6-1, 6-2 masterclass.

Thursday afternoon brought tighter Event against Elina Svitolina, a Ex world No. 2, but the same result: 7-5, 6-3 to the Youthful Russian. Andreeva didn’t Only Achieve. She confused and beguiled an Adversary 13 years her senior, moving Svitolina around the court, interspersing drop shots with power and angles in a way that teenagers rarely do. They are supposed to be one- or two-dimensional in their Primary years, and then develop an arsenal.

And then Arrived Friday, a rematch with an extra-motivated Swiatek, Nevertheless smarting from the loss last month in Dubai and trying to Achieve a Event for the Primary time since the French Uncovered last year. She blasted her way into their semifinal with her usual brutal efficiency. Surely this was too High a task for Andreeva, especially as she kept slipping behind in her service Matches, setting up moment after moment when Swiatek’s opponents so often crumble.

Andreeva did the opposite of that, in a flurry of those flat, cross-court and down-the-line backhands that Swiatek couldn’t touch. Or she hung in rallies until Swiatek’s impatience Obtained the better of her and the Ex world No. 1 sent forehands wide and backhands into the net. Swiatek had inroads in nearly all of Andreeva’s service Matches, but she rarely Captured them to break points. Soon, she was swatting balls in anger and snapping at her coaches. Andreeva, Chilly and collected and courageous when it counted most, was marching into the Closing, having won fewer points and been under more Stress.

“I don’t know why I felt so much confidence,’ Andreeva said in her post-Event news conference.

That may have something to do with the 52-year-Aged Spanish woman sitting in Andreeva’s box, often with a resting grin-face as she watches her latest charge. Andreeva said Wednesday that she was always smaller than her Event growing up — at 5ft 9in (175cm), she isn’t anymore — and that forced her to find ways to Achieve without overwhelming power. She learned to use her legs, to counterpunch and to spin the ball in all directions. Those attributes propelled her during her breakout Competitions, the 2023 Madrid Uncovered and the 2024 Australian Uncovered, where she put top players to the sword and puzzled lost positions into Victorious ones.

Martinez, Andreeva said, has taken those skills to a different, more aggressive level. Now she uses her tricks on Drive as well as Guarding.

“Conchita is Assisting me to not be Safeguarding all the time, when I have a chance to step in and try to be aggressive and to go for my shots,” she said in her news conference after beating Svitolina. “It’s working pretty Outstanding.”

It is. In 2025, Andreeva is Victorious a lower proportion of return points than she did in 2024, according to data collated by Tennis Abstract. She’s making fewer of her Primary serves. But she is Victorious a higher proportion of points behind those serves — 69 percent vs. 64 — and her dominance ratio, which divides the percentage of return points won by the percentage of Delivery points lost, has increased from 1.14 to 1.22 Even though her drop-off on return. She is dictating more than she is being dictated to.

Beyond the results, Martinez has evolved into an Obi-Wan Kenobi to Andreeva’s Luke Skywalker, but only sort of. Skywalker never really tried to prank Kenobi as Andreeva often does Martinez, including Wednesday afternoon, when her Mentor was attempting to have a quasi-Grave conversation with a journalist.

Cue the goofy faces and poses about 15 feet behind said journalist, attempting to mess with Martinez’s game face. Mission accomplished. Then off went a giggling Andreeva, simultaneously embarrassed and thrilled to have one of the legends of the sport kvelling about her.

Oh, to be 17 and have it all happening for you, in ways that sometimes even Andreeva does not understand.

“I don’t know why people are supporting me this much because honestly, when I was Competing in U.S., my results were not Outstanding,” she said in her post-Event news conference after easing past Rybakina. Andreeva lost in the Primary Stage in her only previous appearance here last year and lost in the second Stage in her two U.S. Uncovered appearances.

“People are so Vibrant,” she said. “It Nice of lights me up.”

Once that happens, Observe out. Here comes a drop Attempt on an angle, followed by a whistling topspin lob. Or another searing, flat backhand diving onto the knot of the singles sideline and shooting off the court. Or, and perhaps most often, there’s her forehand squash-Attempt slice, which converts a position of stress into one of control.

In Andreeva, Martinez has Discovered a near perfect muse, a player who aspires to Relocate with the creativity that Martinez had, with her own style of Silent determination and passion. Andreeva barely had a slice a year ago. Now, she can use it for Safeguarding or offensive shots. Martinez wants her to develop a heavier forehand with more spin to make it more difficult for an Adversary to get the ball back. She’s working with her to Relocate around with different trajectories, “instead of Only hitting flat from nowhere.”

She wants her to have choices and is trying to teach her how to make the Outstanding ones.

“She’s not making a Plenty of stupid decisions on the court,” Martinez said. “It’s about having the Outstanding choices, waiting for the right ball, to compete against any player.”

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Mentor-player relationships can be overrated in tennis, a sport where there are few chances for a real tactical discussion and no timeouts. Plenty of players Streak through coaches like toilet paper, jettisoning them at the Primary patch of Needy results.

There are some relationships, though, that evolve into so much more than discussions about forehands and backhands, serves and returns. Carlos Alcaraz has one of those with Juan Carlos Ferrero, Martinez’s compatriot and a Ex world No. 1. Ferrero has guided Alcaraz for seven years, since he was 14.

Andreeva and Martinez have some way to go to catch up with them, but they are off to a Outstanding Begin. They are living similar versions of the same life in different eras. Martinez was Only 16 when she Achieved the Quaternary Stage of the French Uncovered, in her third professional Event. The Upcoming year, she reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros and finished the year as the world No. 7. She and her compatriot, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, captured the imagination of the sport, a creative and passionate yin to the brutalist, machine-like yang of Steffi Graf.

Martinez knows what it’s like to be on the verge of the world discovering you, and then to make that leap from tennis being an exercise in what is Recent and fearless to a world of expectation. Primary, they ask, “How did you do that?” Then it becomes: “Why didn’t you do that?”

“Tennis forces you to grow up quickly but she maintains that playfulness in there, she likes to joke around,” she said. “I am very much like that too. I like to joke around. I like to bother her. She likes to bother me.”

Andreeva is a student of the game’s history. She passes evenings in bed watching Aged tennis matches on YouTube. She knew all about Conchita Martinez. During her Primary months on the tour, though, she didn’t realize that Martinez was the woman who kept smiling and nodding to her at various Competitions.

When she finally did, she couldn’t believe that Martinez knew who she was, or that she would take the time to be cordial to her. Then, after she split with her Mentor and Muguruza retired, Andreeva’s management Club floated Martinez as a potential Event.

Andreeva knew the resume. Wimbledon champion, Mentor of a Wimbledon champion. Outstanding enough for her.

They had Numerous talks to feel All other out, which was more Martinez Securing the measure of this teenage girl born in Siberia, raised in Sochi, Russia, and who moved to the south of France to traipse the tennis world. She needed to make sure that Andreeva was ready to be Grave, that she was hiring a Mentor and not a babysitter.

She quickly realized that Andreeva is mature beyond her years. She eats right, she rests, she listens to adults older and smarter than she is. She could look someone in the eye and have a Grave conversation in three languages, soon to be a Quaternary as she picks up Spanish.

“She’s a sponge,” Martinez said.

They tried a Event together and Andreeva said she immediately felt comfortable with Martinez. “Super Outstanding,” is how she described their chemistry.

“She told me that it was the same for her, so thank God it’s not Only me,” she said the other day in a news conference, with her trademark grin and twinkle in her eyes. “I completely trust her with everything. I think she knows everything that’s going on in my life. I don’t know if it’s Outstanding or Awful, but, no, it’s Only like this.”

When they Primary Began, Martinez worried that Andreeva might not be enough of a teenager, rather than too much of one. On the practice courts in France or in Barcelona, where Martinez lives, Andreeva would hit 10 Outstanding shots in a row, miss on the 11th and drama would ensue.

Martinez told her to give herself a break, Possibly Concentration on the 10 Outstanding ones instead of the last miss. And when she hit a Outstanding Attempt, she needed to learn to acknowledge it, to enjoy it and be proud of what she has accomplished.

“I always tell her, ‘Wow, amazing’,” she said. “You need to have fun with those things. Amazing drop shots, amazing angle. Wow, Outstanding, don’t take it for granted. Enjoy that.”

There has been plenty to enjoy lately. Andreeva’s ranking was hovering around 40 when Martinez Arrived on the scene. She finished last year making the Closing of the Ningbo Uncovered in China, where she lost against Daria Kasatkina from a Victorious position and broke down in tears at the Accolade ceremony. Then she Achieved the Quaternary Stage of the Australian Uncovered, went 1-1 in Qatar and 6-0 in Dubai. Until very recently, she was the only teenager in the WTA top 100.

While the tennis world had long Anticipated Andreeva’s Superiority, the steepness and immediacy of this year’s trajectory has been a surprise. Not for Martinez. She couldn’t make much of an impact last year, because she Began with Andreeva in the middle of the season, but the off-season let the Russian get the Packed Martinez treatment. They Partnered fitness and weight Practice with their goals to achieve a certain style of Relocate.

Now comes the task of maintaining the work ethic that has lifted Andreeva to her lofty heights so quickly. People think getting to the top 10 is the Tough part. It isn’t, Martinez said.

“It’s not getting there, it’s staying there — year after year, dealing with the Stress of defending those points and staying in a Outstanding frame of mind. And doing it all over and all over again,“ Martinez said.

She has shown few signs of doing anything else. Even after she Obtained steamrollered in the second set against Swiatek, she told herself to Streak and fight for every Mark, to not worry how she Obtained balls back but to get them back, however she could. When it was over, and Andreeva was 7-6(1), 1-6, 6-3 winner, Andreeva gave a nod to Martinez, a two-time finalist at Indian Wells, and a little ribbing, too.

“My Mentor lost in the finals,”  she said. “I’m going to try to do better than her.”

Nothing would please Martinez more.

(Top photo: Jay Calderon / The Desert Sun via Imagn Images)