Andy Roddick backs teenage sensation Mirra Andreeva as the WTA Tour's next best thing

Andreeva won the biggest title of her career at the WTA 1000 event in Dubai this past weekend. She defeated Dane Clara Tauson 7-6(1), 6-1 in the Dubai final to become the youngest-ever WTA 1000 winner in the format's history.

With the victory, the Russian entered the top 10 for the first time - being the youngest to do so since 2007 - and now sits as the world No. 9 at just 17 years old.

"Mirra Andreeva is going to be number one in the world at some point," stated the former world No. 1, on his 'Served with Andy Roddick' podcast.

"I watched her more this week continuously - because normally it's in a Slam. But she serves so much better than people give her credit for and it's only going to get better.

"What I worried about was that she is not one of the physical phenom specimens of a [Jennifer] Capriati or a [Lindsay] Davenport or a Venus [Williams] or a Serena [Williams]. The one I can think of who is a phenom not in the too distant past is [Martina] Hingis, who then got overpowered.

"So Andreeva, is she going to be able to create enough pace to not get overpowered by [Aryna] Sabalenka or Swiatek? She has beaten both of them."

En route to her Dubai title, Andreeva defeated three Grand Slam champions â- Marketa Vondrousova, Iga Swiatek, and Elena Rybakina.

Roddick went on to state: "She is an elite mover already, she creates enough pace and what I am going to talk about that nobody does. Her ability to play against people's movement makes her shots bigger. She doesn't have to go big to go through you.

"Her preparation is good enough where she can pull the ripcord and play behind the women that she's playing against consistently. And if the rally builds she can stay in it and tee up. She has options. IQ beyond her years - Conchita Martinez has done an amazing job guiding the ship. But she serves great.

"I was watching her and thinking why is nobody talking about this? Maybe it is like it can improve things and she has 30% runway in physicality, she is going to get bigger, stronger and faster. It's not as if it is going to go the other way."

After her Dubai victory, the young Russian revealed that her initial aim was to end 2025 ranked inside the world's top 10: "Now when you enter Top 10 and the higher your ranking is, the slower and longer it's going to take for you to be even higher because the difference in the points is very, very short, very small.

"I think it's going to be hard to enter Top 5. This is the exact goal that I'm going to set for myself, to be Top 5 by the end of the year. I'm very curious if I will be able to achieve it."

Mirra Andreeva is next scheduled to participate at the Indian Wells event, March 5th - March 16th.

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