Bianca Andreescu reached her first Grand Slam finals, after defeating Belinda Bencic with 7-6, 7-5. The Canadian teenage sensation keeps making surprises, and her unbelievable adventure here in New York just received another chapter.
The 19-year old will face one of the greatest of this sport, Serena Williams who is aiming to finally win one Grand Slam finals after three straight losses. The American veteran also seeks revenge for a recent defeat in the Rogers Cup finals, when she had to withdraw from the match.
“It’s just surreal. Like, I really don’t know what to say,” said Andreescu. “It’s a dream come true playing against Serena in the finals of the US Open. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.”
Andreescu had a lot of troubles against the motivated Bencic who refused to go down without a huge fight. The first set lasted for more than an hour, and there weren’t any break point chances on either side. Andreescu had to work hard, making 25 winners, but also recording 20 unforced errors before catching the opportunity in the tiebreak to take that sequence.
When everybody at Flushing Meadows believed that she broke Bencic’s morale, the Swiss player rose to the occasion, and significantly improved her game, pressuring her rival, trying to find a crack in her defense.
And she did. Andreescu couldn’t pull herself together in the opening phase of that set, as she lost her serve twice and was looking very tired. Quickly enough, she was 4-1 and 5-2 up on her way to level the score.
But something happened to the Swiss player, and she missed an opportunity at 4-1 to increase the lead handing the break to Andreescu after two double faults. It was the start of her fall. With 5-2 for Bencic, the Canadian won five straight games, making one of the best comebacks in this year’s tournament and making the crowd go wild at Arthur Ashe.
Now she has to face Serena, who won her first crown here in 1999, when the youngster from Mississauga, Ontario wasn’t even born.
“It’s just surreal,” Andreescu said about the prospect of playing against Serena in the finals. “Like, I really don’t know what to say.”
What might be her advantage is the fact that Williams plays under massive pressure. She simply has to win here in order to reach Margaret Court, who has one more Grand Slam trophy than the American. Court has 24, and Williams 23. We’ve seen in the past that Serena sometimes doesn’t know how to handle tension and that despite her dominance on the court, she is mentally vulnerable.
Andreescu, on the other side, has nothing to lose. She is a complete underdog here, who will play against the most dominant player of probably all time, against the crowd, and against her age. Although it might sound strange, it is a perfect position for the teenage sensation.
This is the finals with the largest age gap between the two participants – 18 years.
The clash is set for Saturday.
