Jelena Ostapenko doesn't exactly play a pretty brand of tennis. She knows one way, and that is to try to power through matches. She's won a Grand Slam that way, but she is also inconsistent in her form. The latter is also true of Mirra Andreeva, Ostapenko's first-round opponent in Stuttgart.
Both players can be stellar at times, capable of winning Masters 1000s or higher, but neither is yet consistent enough to reach the top five on the WTA tour and stay there. Andreeva, of course, has the better excuse. She won't turn 19 years old until late April. Young players are supposed to have their ups and downs.
What made the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix match even more frustrating at times for Ostapenko and Andreeva is that each player, struggling with consistency over the past year, struggles with the same problem during the match. Not just set to set, but sometimes point to point.
Mirra Andreeva stuns Jelena Ostapenko in the first round of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix
Ostapenko, the current WTA No. 22, at least knew from experience that she could rule in Stuttgart. She won the event in 2025. Maybe she just wants another Porsche, as that is part of the winnings for the player who takes the title at the event.
For Andreeva, she just wants to try to keep building off her title at the Upper Austria Ladies Linz and forget about her too-early defeats and her previous five tournaments.
Neither player could hold serve very well. Ostapenko won the first set 7-5, but was broken twice. Not an issue as she broke Andreeva three times. The script flipped in set two when the Russian got three breaks of serve and evened the match at 6-2.
In the third set, Ostapenko got yet another early break and seemed well on her way to moving to the second round, but, of course, Andreeva got the break she needed to even the set. The question was whether each player was simply having a magnificent day returning or whether both needed to do some post-match work on their serves.
Mirra Andreeva then began to roll. She ran off four straight games to lead 5-4 and only needed to reverse the trend of being broken to move on. She did, but only after facing a break point, of course. Andreeva will next face American qualifier Alycia Parks in the second round.
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