The new tennis “prodigy” Mirra Andreeva failed in the round of 16 of the 136th All England Championships in Wimbledon.
The 16-year-old Russian missed a clear lead against Madison Keys from the USA and lost after 2:02 hours on the second match point 6:3, 6:7 (4:7), 2:6.
Defending champion Elena Rybakina, on the other hand, progressed practically without a fight. Her opponent Beatriz Haddad Maia (Brazil), who is ranked 13th in the world, had to retire due to injury when the Kazakhs were 4-1 up.
Tennis prodigy gives up the match
After a remarkable performance in the second set, Andreeva was already 4:1 and 40:30 in the lead, but then the match slipped from game to game.
You could see her frustration, twice she got a point deducted for throwing a racket, in the second case it led to Keys’ first match point.
“She’s a phenomenal player,” Keys said of the Siberian whiz, who now lives in Cannes. “I was just trying to stay in the match because I knew my many, many more years on the tour would pay off.”
Keys is now in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon for the first time since 2015. Since then, the 28-year-old had reached the final of the 2017 US Open, the semi-finals of the 2018 French Open and US Open and the 2022 Australian Open.
Andreeva, who had played the junior tournament at the Australian Open in Melbourne at the beginning of the year, had qualified for the main draw like at the French Open.
At the beginning of the year she was still 293rd in the world rankings, after Wimbledon she will probably be ranked 64th.