Mirra Andreeva smashed her racket several times during a 4-6, 6-7(5), 6-3 loss to unseeded Katerina Siniakova at Indian Wells on Monday night, then left the court exchanging words with the crowd.
Defending champion Andreeva, 18, punched herself and threw her racket after losing the second set tiebreaker before smashing it, resulting in a code violation.
She threw her racket again following match point and then, after shaking hands at the net with Siniakova, left the court gesturing and shouting ‘f*** you all’ at the crowd.
After taking the first set, tensions arose when Siniakova complained to the umpire about the minimal time Andreeva took while serving. Umpire Jennifer Zhang asked the 18-year-old to slow down between points, but the No 8 seed argued that she could do as she pleased.
‘Well if I’m serving, it’s up to me if it’s bothering me or not, right? And she was already [in] place,’ Andreeva said.
Umpire Zhang replied: ‘No, but it’s both players. She was not [there] yet actually,’ to which Andreeva said: ‘Well, because I’m still serving, so my focus is on the ball. So if I don’t see her, it means she doesn’t bother me. You see everything so you can say that this and that can bother everyone. I’m serving. If she’s not bothering me…’
Mirra Andreeva, 18, suffered a meltdown during her Indian Wells defeat on Sunday
The youngster smashed her racquet, punched herself and told the crowd to ‘f*** off’
Hostilities intensified between the pair during the second set, and Andreeva repeatedly punched her thigh after losing a break point at 2-1.
‘Andreeva really getting upset with herself here. Don’t like seeing that. At least she’s doing it with her fist this time and not her racket, but don’t want to see that. Did that in Dubai as well,’ commentator John Horn said.
The rollercoaster set concluded with Andreeva losing a tie-breaker after misfiring a forehand long. Upset, the Russian lobbed her racket across the court and continued slamming it into the ground while receiving a code violation from the umpire.
She then asked her entire team to leave her coaching box. That move did little to inspire any momentum in the third set, with Siniakova reeling off four straight games to win the match.
Andreeva, incredibly frustrated with the outcome of the match, then clashed with the crowd – telling them to ‘f*** off’ while they booed her off court, to which a stunned spectator could be seen mouthing ‘oh my God’.
‘I´m not really proud of how I managed it. I´m not really proud of how I handled it in the end,’ Andreeva said in a news conference after her third round defeat.
‘Those are the things that I really need to work on soon. I don´t know. Not in the future but whenever I get the chance.’
There are high hopes of a fruitful career for tennis prodigy Andreeva, who has already made a Grand Slam semi-final during her burgeoning career, having reached the last four at Roland Garros in 2024. She also reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon last year.
