LAS VEGAS — One year ago, 16-year-old tennis pro Mirra Andreeva lost in the first round at Indian Wells, then withdrew from the Miami Open. Her IMG agent suggested hiring Conchita Martinez as coach.
At that nadir, something clicked. At 16, Martinez had turned pro in 1988. The pair joined forces, and Andreeva lost in the quarterfinals of a tournament in Rouen, France.
Something about Andreeva impressed me at the 2024 Australian Open. Unseeded, she reached the fourth round. Then came the fizzle and Martinez’s influence.
Andreeva again reached the fourth round Down Under two months ago, then won the Dubai Championships, her first tournament crown.
That compelled me to nab a 16-to-1 ticket on her winning Indian Wells, widely considered the fifth major on both tours.
Betting on sports requires imagination, tact and timing, and Andreeva became the toast of tennis by winning five matches to meet top-ranked Aryna Sabalinka in the desert finale.
Andreeva won 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 by “running like a rabbit,” she said, around the Indian Wells Tennis Garden’s main court. Commentators called her serve the WTA’s best. Thanks, Conchita. Andreeva vaulted from ninth to sixth in the world.
“I broke into the top 10 very fast,” Martinez said at Indian Wells. “And since we started, she’s already there — boom! Now we just have to keep the feet on the floor.”
No more
I had stopped betting individual sports.
After moving here in 2002, I wagered on NASCAR driver Matt Kenseth, solely because he’s a fellow Wisconsinite, at favorable tracks in Daytona, Michigan, Phoenix, Southern California and Vegas.
He proceeded to win 33 races. I was on many of them. At Las Vegas Motor Speedway once, I got him at 12-1. Two days later, at 16-1, I reinvested. Kenseth won. I wasn’t accustomed to carrying so many C-notes.
In 2018, I struck further gold when Tommy Fleetwood (18-1 in Abu Dhabi), Bubba Watson (40-1 at Riviera) and Brooks Koepka (20-1 at the PGA in Missouri) all cashed on the PGA Tour.
Since then, zero golf title cashes. Moreover, buying insurance, with top-five, top-10 or top-20 finishes, created too many rabbit-hole investment drains. I steadily bet golf less frequently.
Andreeva and Oz
Then came the Aussie Open and Andreeva. Mirra and her older sister, fellow tennis pro Erika, were born in Siberia, moved to Moscow to train and, since 2022, have called the French Riviera home.
This interest, since Jan. 1, fueled a tennis-reading jag.
“Epic,” by Matthew Cronin, details the 1980 Wimbledon finale between super-brat John McEnroe and super-Swede Björn Borg. Of the 482 total points played, Borg, the victor, won 242, McEnroe 240.
In his highly entertaining “Handful of Summers,” Gordon Forbes highlights learning the game in South Africa and his global pro exploits in the 1950s and ’60s.
He accuses himself of not committing “to the business of becoming Wimbledon champion,” hopelessly underestimating the dedication and patience required to achieve perfection, not thinking deeply enough.
He believed “preposterously benign tennis gods” would look out for him.
“They didn’t, of course,” Forbes wrote. “They very seldom do. The only people upon whom they bestow fluky shots at very critical moments are either those who have irrevocably dedicated their hearts to those moments …
“Or else, and on rare occasions only, to those who have approached the moment with such honest courage and daring and valor that, in reluctant admiration, they have awarded them the benefit of the doubt.”
Late author David Foster Wallace grew up playing tennis in Philo, Illinois, but didn’t advance beyond regional triumphs. He described the sport as fluid geometrics.
In chronicling Tracy Austin’s meteoric rise in “String Theory,” Wallace recalled how she played Wimbledon at 14, won the U.S. Open at 16 and was ranked No. 1 in the world at 17, in 1980.
Then — boom!
“The same year her body started to fall apart,” he wrote, calling her career arc “nearly Greek.”
“[Her] most conspicuous virtue, a relentless workaholic perfectionism that combined with raw talent to make her such a prodigious success, turned out to be also her flaw and bane.”
A divine touch
I had long believed baseball most mirrored life. Wrong. By far, it’s tennis. Solo. Alone. Against the world. Jousts that can last three, four or five excruciating hours.
Players can possess an extraordinary blend of physicality and finesse, be completely devoted to the sport, yet, as Forbes put it, still require “the divine intervention of mellow gods.”
Wallace submitted that tennis is the most beautiful sport.
“And also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and that strange mix of caution and abandon we call courage.”
I concur, steep rises and deep falls sometimes separated by a mere fortnight. That’s life.
At the Miami Open last Sunday, Andreeva lost to Amanda Anisimova in the round of 32. Soulless idiots lobbed sinister social-media words at Andreeva.
What interventions do the benign and mellow tennis gods have in store for her? With Martinez in her corner, celebrations seem inevitable.
At BetMGM, Andreeva is +500 to win the French Open, +700 at Wimbledon and +500 at the U.S. Open. Most definitely, the days of getting 16-1 title odds on her are long gone.