By Clare Lovell
LONDON (Reuters) -Seventh seed Mirra Andreeva blasted her way into the third round at Wimbledon on Thursday with a 6-1 7-6(4) victory over Italy’s Lucia Bronzetti and thanked her coach, former Wimbledon champion Conchita Martinez, for making her work hard.
The 18-year-old Russian was the only teenager from six women’s starters to have made it through to the second round and she looked sure-footed on Wimbledon’s grass, the surface where she hit the headlines aged 16 with a whirlwind race to the fourth round in 2023.
She completely dominated her 26-year-old opponent in the first set on Thursday using her big serve, heavy slice and neat net play to wrap it up in 23 minutes.
But she had a fight on her hands in the second as Bronzetti, ranked a lowly 63, found her stride and range in the second. Andreeva eventually triumphed on her second match point in the tiebreak, with a fine forehand volley winner.
“I got a little bit nervous and she started to play better,” Andreeva said in a courtside interview before adding she would not be getting much time off because she had doubles to play and then Martinez would want to run over some elements of her game.
“She’s not going to let me go home,” the Russian said.
“She pushes me to my limits so thanks for that, I guess,” she added to smiles from Martinez in the coaches’ box on Court One.
Spaniard Martinez was an unheralded winner of the title in 1994, beating nine-times champion Martina Navratilova in the final.
Andreeva and compatriot Diana Shnaider are seeded fifth in the doubles and scheduled to play British pair Heather Watson and Emily Appleton on an outside court later on Thursday.
Andreeva will play Hailey Baptiste of the United States, who beat Canada’s Victoria Mboko on Thursday, in the third round of the singles on Saturday.
(Reporting by Clare Lovell; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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