{"id":22074,"date":"2026-06-07T06:02:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T06:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/07\/mirra-andreevas-first-grand-slam-always-felt-like-a-when-at-the-french-open-she-made-it-so-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T06:02:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T06:02:35","slug":"mirra-andreevas-first-grand-slam-always-felt-like-a-when-at-the-french-open-she-made-it-so-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/07\/mirra-andreevas-first-grand-slam-always-felt-like-a-when-at-the-french-open-she-made-it-so-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirra Andreeva\u2019s first Grand Slam always felt like a \u2018when.\u2019 At the French Open, she made it so – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennis
French
Open 2026
Mirra Andreeva, 19, is the youngest French Open women's champion since Monica Seles in 1992. Thibault Camus \/ Associated Press<\/span>
How Mirra Andreeva won the 2026 French Open<\/a><\/em>
PARIS \u2014 Women\u2019s tennis has a new Grand Slam queen, and she is going to be around for a while.
Mirra Andreeva<\/a>, the 19-year-old Russian raised from her first years to fulfill her mother\u2019s dreams of having a child who would reach the top of the sport, won the French Open Saturday with an emphatic 6-3, 6-2 win<\/a> over Maja Chwali\u0144ska<\/a> of Poland, a 24-year-old who was trying to become the first qualifier to win the title at Roland Garros in the Open Era.
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For Andreeva, it was a new high point in a career that has seen so many of them in the three years and two months since she shot onto the scene as a 15-year-old at the Madrid Open. That version of Andreeva showed up with her eyes wide open, taking to Twitter to tell the world she had just seen Andy Murray IRL, before knocking off a Grand Slam finalist and two top-20 players on her way to the fourth round.
It was quite the debut, and on Saturday, 1,137 days later, through lots of growing pains and plenty of on-court meltdowns, Andreeva lifted the Coupe Suzanne-Lenglen at the end of a tournament in which so many of the big favorites had melted amid golden opportunities to seize the moment.
When it was over, Andreeva delivered her trademark trophy speech, making sure to show gratitude to the woman of the hour after working her way through the cast of her support team.
\u201cI also want to thank myself, for believing in myself and always giving my 100 percent even when it\u2019s tough,\u201d she said on Court Philippe-Chatrier. \u201cOnly I know how tough it was for me.\u201d
Chwali\u0144ska, her last obstacle, was responsible for much of the unforeseen carnage at this year\u2019s French Open. She was the world No. 114 at the start of the qualifying tournament. She played her first round of the main draw, against the Olympic champion, Zheng Qinwen \u2014 wearing a logo-free solid gray top, since she had no clothing sponsor.
Her left-handed combinations of spins and height and drop shots beguiled foe after foe. No one could get the ball past her. No one could win the cat-and-mouse duels that she imposed on every match. Chwali\u0144ska was the symbol of a tournament busted wide open, a chaotic conflagration of all the forces of women\u2019s tennis these days, where depth causes danger from the moment the first balls fly.
Mostly, though, by the time the last ball drops at one of the four majors, one of a handful of players who seem likely to survive to the end is holding the trophy, and order of a sort gets restored.
This order comes with a twist.
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While Andreeva was among the half-dozen most likely French Open winners when play began a fortnight ago, her getting over the line still shakes up the top of the sport. She is the first teenager to win a Grand Slam title since Coco Gauff at the 2023 U.S. Open, and her win puts her among a tight bunch ranked between world No. 3 and No. 7, hot on the chase of the No. 2 and No. 1, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka.
Even before Andreeva\u2019s 20th birthday, winning a Grand Slam title has long been a matter of when, rather than if, for her.
\u201cYou are so young and talented, it\u2019s so annoying,\u201d Chwali\u0144ska joked from the stage during the trophy ceremony.
This is the way it was always supposed to go. Her mother, Raisa, fell in love with tennis 21 years ago in Siberia, while watching Marat Safin defeat Lleyton Hewitt in the Australian Open final. Mirra\u2019s older sister, Erika, was an infant. Mirra was still more than two years away from her first breath.
By the time the girls were toddlers, they were being toted to tennis lessons, then to Sochi for better coaching, then to France for academy training. Roughly a dozen years later, the Andreeva family had two teenage tennis pros on their hands. As happens so often in the sport \u2014 see: John McEnroe, Serena Williams, Andy Murray \u2014 the younger one was on the fast track to the top.
Andreeva\u2019s rise appeared to become even more of an eventuality two years ago, when she began working with Conchita Mart\u00ednez, the Spanish teen phenom of four decades ago. Mart\u00ednez would be the one to both manage Andreeva\u2019s talent and variety, her unique combinations of touch and power, and help her find the right balance between her diamond conviction to win, and her propensity for blowing a fuse and self-destructing when games and sets and matches didn\u2019t go her way.
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From her first months on the tour, Andreeva showed that she could burn too hot, letting her anger and frustration and perfectionism get the better of her.  She was lucky not to get defaulted during her first shot at the French Open main draw, when she fired a ball into a crowd.
At last year\u2019s Roland Garros, she drowned in a cacophony of boos as she tried to survive a filleting at the hands of hometown favorite Lo\u00efs Boisson. Through last fall and this winter, she kept succumbing to tears at tough moments in matches \u2014 sometimes in tight moments in big ones, sometimes in innocuous moments in small ones.
In March, she walked on to Stadium 1 at Indian Wells in the California Desert to defend her BNP Paribas Open title. She walked off cursing at the crowd with fury and futility after the pressure of being the favorite sent her spiraling to a defeat against Kate\u0159ina Siniakov\u00e1 of the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

Then, a month ago, at her favorite Madrid Open, she lost a 5-1 third-set lead against Hungary\u2019s Anna Bond\u00e1r. Andreeva sat with her towel, telling Mart\u00ednez and the rest of the tennis-watching world that she was not a champion, that she would choke, and that she would lose.
Instead, she won. Madrid did not bring a title, but it did bring clarity.
Since her ugly day in Madrid, Andreeva has kept reminding herself of the words of her psychologist, who told her that everyone gets to decide what kind of player and person they are on the tennis court.
In her post-final news conference, Andreeva said she decided to \u201cchoose to be a fighter.\u201d She also started binging Roger Federer matches, watching how he carried himself and almost always kept his cool. That\u2019s the player she wanted to be. After her semifinal win in Paris, Andreeva said that her concentration and visualization work, also with her psychologist, had allowed her to see the hairs on the tennis ball as she hit it.
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That did not guarantee she was ready to win a title. She had arrived at the French Open as a player capable of making a deep run, but lately in women\u2019s tennis, Grand Slam titles have largely been the domain of the best of the best, all people who had won them before.
Iga \u015awi\u0105tek. Gauff. Rybakina. Sabalenka. Surely winning one of the sport\u2019s four big titles would require going through one of them.
It didn\u2019t. Rybakina, the Australian Open champion, fell in the second round. Gauff, trying to defend her title, lost in the third. \u015awi\u0105tek, the four-time French Open winner and Wimbledon champion, lost in the fourth. Sabalenka, the U.S. Open champion and world No. 1, got bounced in the quarters.
Entering the semifinals, Andreeva was the only top-10 player left and seemingly the favorite, a role that has not always suited her under the bright lights. So many of her losses the past year have come earlier than they were supposed to, at the hands of lower-ranked opponents. Could she handle being the player to beat?
She could. She glided past a tight Marta Kostyuk in the semifinals. In Saturday\u2019s final, she came out tentatively, feeling out the texture of Chwali\u0144ska\u2019s game, which is so out-of-keeping with the top of women\u2019s tennis in 2026.
Andreeva lost her serve twice, before holding it to draw even with Chwali\u0144ska at 3-3. At 30-30 in the next game, Chwali\u0144ska wobbled, sending an open forehand long and slicing a backhand into the net.
In her news conference, Chwali\u0144ska said Andreeva handled the windy conditions and her nerves far better than she did. She said she had been so stressed by her storybook run that she had barely eaten the past three weeks.
\u201cPeople are expecting we\u2019re going to be acting like adults and we\u2019re just kids,\u201d Chwali\u0144ska said.
With those gifts, Andreeva took off. By the time Chwali\u0144ska found her footing again, Andreeva was up 2-0 in the second set and on her way. She played too loose while trying to serve out the championship at 6-3, 5-1, but she wasn\u2019t about to let this one slip away. She jumped ahead as Chwali\u0144ska started serving, cracked a short, crosscourt backhand into the corner on her first match point and sunk to her knees in elation.
That group of players one must get through to win a Grand Slam grew by one on Saturday. Add Mirra Andreeva\u2019s name to the list. Don\u2019t plan on crossing it out anytime soon.
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TennisFrenchOpen 2026Mirra Andreeva, 19, is the youngest French Open women's champion since Monica Seles in 1992. Thibault Camus \/ Associated PressHow Mirra Andreeva won the 2026 French OpenPARIS \u2014 Women\u2019s tennis has a new Grand Slam queen, and she is going to be around for a while.Mirra Andreeva, the 19-year-old Russian raised from her first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}