‘Is this real life?’
Bianca Andreescu rolls into U.S. Open semifinals
NEW YORK — The runaway train that is Bianca Andreescu’s rookie season continues to roll.
The 19-year-old Canadian, playing in her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, advanced to the semis of the U.S. Open on Wednesday in a comeback 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 victory over Belgium’s Elise Mertens.
The result puts another notch on Andreescu’s remarkable streak of 22 straight wins in completed matches, a run that dates to late February.
“This is, honestly, so crazy,” she said on court after the match. “Is this real life?”
It is, actually. It is also the first time a Canadian has gone this far in the U.S Open since Carling Bassett in 1984.
“If you had told me a year ago that I would be in the semifinal of the U.S. Open, I would have said you were crazy,” Andreescu said in her post-match news conference.
Through 10 days in New York, Andreescu had flashed a powerful all-court game that had much of the tennis world swooning over her ability to make all kinds of shots. She had also shown a tendency to make key shots in high-leverage points.
It took some time for those tendencies to show themselves on Wednesday, but once they did Andreescu was her normal ferocious self.
Mertens, a 23-year-old who has been ranked inside the top 20 for several years, took the first set with surprising ease, taking advantage of Andreescu mistakes and serving powerfully and accurately herself.
Andreescu, though, turned things around halfway through the second set, breaking Mertens’ service game with a rocket of a forehand and then holding serve herself. It was not a surprise that she would not go down without taking some big swings. She won three straight games to clinch the second set, winning 17 of 22 points in that stretch. This was the power game for which she had quickly become known.
“I just told myself to keep fighting and hope that I can switch things around basically,” she said. “I tried to stay more aggressive than the first set, and I felt like I was missing a lot in the first set, as well.”
That momentum did not carry over to the deciding set, and Andreescu was noticeably frustrated. Her usual shouts of “come ON” after good shots sounded more plaintive after poor ones. Through six games of the third set, she had failed to deliver the killshot on four break-point opportunities.
The kill-shot eventually came. On her seventh break chance of the set, Andreescu smoked a backhand return deep that Mertens couldn’t handle, 5-3, and the Canadian would serve for the match.
It would end with an anti-climactic finish. A routine hold, and the kid from the Toronto suburbs would spend at least one more sleep in New York. She put both hands on her head, stunned. When she sat down to gather her equipment, she held her head in both hands again.
“I’m going to be honest. I don’t think I played my best tennis,” she said “I just fought really well with what I had every single day. I think that’s the most important thing for me, and I’m sure for every athlete, you’re not going to have good days every day.
“So I just try my best to figure out what’s going well and what’s not and just go from there.” Mertens gave a succinct as- sessment of the opponent that had beaten her: “She never gives up.”