Ashlyn Krueger collects her biggest win, over Mirra Andreeva, at the US Open: “This is what you play for”

NEW YORK—If an athlete has a name that can be chanted, New York sports fans won’t waste any time making it happen. Even when the athlete in question is an unseeded, 20-year-old tennis player from Dallas, who had never won a main-draw match at the US Open before this week.

The sound of “Ash-lyn Krue-ger!” could be heard around the Grandstand at Flushing Meadows on Thursday. Did the people doing the chanting know anything about her or her career before today? Does it matter? What matters is that she impressed them enough with her performance to turn them into fans.

Krueger was playing what may have been the best match of her young career, and attempting to record her biggest win on a major stage. Her opponent, Mirra Andreeva, is three years younger, but she was the heavy favorite. The 21st-seeded, 17-year-old Russian has had a meteoric rise over the 15 months. She reached the semifinals at Roland Garros this spring, nearly beat Iga Swiatek in Cincinnati two weeks ago, and is touted by virtually everyone as a future major winner.

But Krueger outplayed Andreeva from the first game today. She used all of her 6’1” frame to hammer first serves to her targets, and follow with equally penetrating forehands and confidently angled two-handed backhands. Andreeva is normally a powerful force from the baseline, but it was Krueger who was beating her to the punch. She won the first set 6-1, and led 5-2 in the second.

With the U.S. fans behind her, and her teenage opponent flustered, it looked like her breakthrough moment had arrived. Then she was broken, Andreeva held for 4-5, and Krueger stepped up to try to serve it out again.

Could she get over the finish line, or would this have to go down as another learning experience in defeat?

Compared to the sure-shot Andreeva, the 59th-ranked Krueger has taken a painstaking path out of the juniors and into the pro ranks. In 2020, she won the Orange Bowl in singles, and the next year she and fellow American Robin Montgomery won the girls’ doubles title at the US Open. She hooked up with veteran coach Michael Joyce, who has worked with Maria Sharapova and Jessica Pegula. The two have spent the last three years doing the tour grind. When I talked to Joyce in 2021, he and Krueger were just starting out, but he was confident that he saw something great not just in her game, but in her desire to succeed.

Krueger, tall and blonde, describes herself as “observant, competitive, and passionate.” As a Sharapova fan, she likes hearing Joyce’s (many) stories of their old days together. She also says he’s the funniest person on tour. As a coach, she says she trusts “whatever he has to offer.” She and Joyce try not to focus on the rankings, and to keep her objectives simple and attainable.

“I think I focus on day-in, day-out goals,” Krueger told Tennis Channel this spring. “Like getting in an hour of stretching, or serving and volleying five times on the court. One that helps me focus on my game and helps my confidence.”

Week to week, city to city, continent to continent, from small ITF events in college towns to the qualies at the Slams, with exhilarating wins followed by brutal losses, Krueger has taken the long road and learned the pro game the hard way. Her goals were modest, but she met them. In 2023, she won her first title, in Osaka, Japan, and then set her sights on making her first main draw at the Australian Open. She succeeded, but she didn’t get out of the first round there, or at Roland Garros or Wimbledon. At Wimbledon, she took just two games from Jessica Pegula.

Starting this month, though, something began to click. Krueger wasn’t in the Olympics, so she had a head start on the summer hard-court season and its quicker-than-normal courts. She won four matches—too qualifying, two main draw—in Toronto. She beat Olympic silver medalist Donna Vekic in Cincinnati, then teared up afterward when she thought about attending the tournament eight years earlier with her family. “The only tournament we ever went to.”

Krueger’s US Open didn’t start on a promising note: She lost her opening set to Shuai Zhang 6-0. But she clawed her way back and won 7-5 in the third.

Then came a seeded opponent in Andreeva, and with it another rise in Krueger’s level.

When we left her match with Andreeva above, Krueger was serving for it, for a second time, at 5-4 in the second set. Even though she had been broken just a few minutes earlier, she didn’t look at all hesitant, tight, or overexcited. And she didn’t play that way, either. She made five straight first serves, and won four of those points, to close out the win without a hitch.

“This is what you play for,” Krueger said, looking like knew she belonged on this stage the whole time.