Italian translation at settesei.it
WTA fans have grown accustomed to watching teenagers blast their elders off the court, but nobody expected this. 18-year-old Bianca Andreescu, ranked just outside the top 150, qualified for the season-opening Auckland event with three victories, overpowered Timea Babos in the first round, and then proceeded to knock out two former WTA No. 1s, Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams. She advances to the semi-final in just her fifth tour-level main draw and will jump at least a few dozen places in the rankings.
What makes Andreescu’s feat so notable is the pedigree of her opponents. Sure, Wozniacki was dealing with physical issues and Williams isn’t quite the unstoppable force she used to be, but fringe players like the Canadian teenager don’t knock out multiple former No. 1s very often.
Going back to 1984, I found just over 2,000 matches in which a top-ranked or former top-ranked player lost. Over 300 players have recorded a win against such an opponent, and elite players have accumulated a lot of these upsets. Serena Williams has beaten No. 1s or former No. 1s over 100 times, and Venus has done so 65 times, including her first-round win over Victoria Azarenka this week.
Andreescu’s achievement in Auckland was the 171st time (again, since 1984) that a player beat two or more such opponents at the same tournament, so we’ve seen it happen about five times per season. It has become more frequent in recent years, at least in part because there are so many former top-ranked players on tour, giving would-be giant-killers more opportunities. Most of the players who beat multiple No. 1s are themselves elite players: Serena accounts for 26 of the 171 tournaments, and Venus for another 9. Andreescu was the 71st different woman to pull off the feat.
At just over 18.5 years of age, the Canadian is one of the youngest players to beat multiple former No. 1s at the same event. She’s a bit older than Belinda Bencic was when she knocked out Serena, Wozniacki, and Ana Ivanovic in Toronto in 2015, but before that we need to go back to the 2006 French Open to find a woman who recorded similar upsets at an earlier age. Here is the full list of such feats accomplished at or before Andreescu’s age:
Event Player Age 1997 French Open Martina Hingis 16.7 1998 Key Biscayne Anna Kournikova 16.8 1998 Berlin Anna Kournikova 16.9 2006 French Open Nicole Vaidisova 17.1 2004 Wimbledon Maria Sharapova 17.2 1999 Indian Wells Serena Williams 17.4 1999 Key Biscayne Serena Williams 17.5 1987 Key Biscayne Steffi Graf 17.7 1988 Boca Raton Gabriela Sabatini 17.8 1999 Manhattan Beach Serena Williams 17.9 2005 Miami Maria Sharapova 17.9 1999 US Open Serena Williams 17.9 2015 Toronto Belinda Bencic 18.4 1996 Tokyo Iva Majoli 18.5 2019 Auckland Bianca Andreescu 18.5
She wouldn’t be the first player on this list to flame out before taking a place among the all-time greats, but in general, that’s good company for an 18-year-old qualifier.
Andreescu stands out even more when we consider that she is ranked far outside the top 100. (At least for another few days.) Of the 171 occasions when a player knocked out two current or former No. 1s, none had done so with such a low ranking. The only other player to accomplish such a thing while outside the top 100 was Louisa Chirico, who beat Azarenka and Ivanovic at the 2016 Madrid event. The Canadian’s career-best week is only the 13th time that a player beat two such opponents while ranked outside the top 40, and a few of those instances came when a typically-great player’s ranking was recovering from time away:
Event Player Age Rank 2019 Auckland Bianca Andreescu 18.5 152 2016 Madrid Louisa Chirico 20.0 130 2003 French Open Nadia Petrova 21.0 76 2017 Madrid Eugenie Bouchard 23.2 60 2007 Istanbul Aravane Rezai 20.2 59 2010 Australian Open Maria Kirilenko 23.0 58 2009 Beijing Shuai Peng 23.7 53 2014 Montreal CoCo Vandeweghe 22.7 51 2007 Beijing Shuai Peng 21.7 49 2005 Paris Dinara Safina 18.8 48 2015 Doha Victoria Azarenka 25.6 48 2018 Indian Wells Naomi Osaka 20.4 44 2014 Dubai Venus Williams 33.7 44
Two shocking upsets are no guarantee of future success, but the demonstrated ability to defeat such elite veterans is probably more indicative of future success than winning a handful of ITF $25K titles (as she has) or lifting trophies for multiple junior grand slam doubles championships (as she did). On a tour already full of promising young stars, it took Andreescu only 48 hours to establish herself as one of the WTA teenagers most worth watching.