18-Year-Old Bianca Andreescu Upsets Tennis Star Venus Williams
When I was 18 years old I wasn’t doing anything particularly productive. In the time between a stint working at a 50s diner I was busy either loitering at said 50s diner with friends (carb loading with a vengeance) or tanking my GPA by getting continually tanked. My contribution to society as a whole was in the negatives & physically I most closely resembled those crescent roll tubes once you crack one open on the counter top.
The same cannot be said for Canadian pro tennis player Bianca Andreescu. This afternoon at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand she beat out Venus Williams 6-7(1), 6-1, 6-3, moving her onto the semi-finals tomorrow.
Born in Canada, she spent much of her childhood in her parent’s home country of Romania & started playing tennis at age 7. Just last year she qualified for her first senior main draw & has exploded from there.
Via Tennis Canada on her performance at last August’s Citi Open in Washington, D.C:
17-year-old Bianca Andreescu achieved more career firsts on Thursday thanks to her impressive 6-2, 6-3 victory over world no. 13 Kristina Mladenovic of France. This is her first Top 20 win and also her first WTA quarter-final, all of this in her first appearance in a WTA main draw. She is the first player born in 2000 to post a victory over a Top 20 player.
In the first round, Andreescu became the youngest Canadian since 1988 to win a WTA main draw match.
Getting to this level takes a tremendous amount of dedication & heart with most players practicing at least four hours per day. The game requires strength, balance, hand-eye-coordination, solid judgement, & a lot of patience. Andreescu clearly has plenty having beat Venus, the #38 player in the world and twenty years her senior, especially considering her own rank, #152.
Both current & 18-year-old-deadbeat-me are in awe at her win, skills and confidence & I expect to see her continue to crush it. Interested to see how she does on Saturday.