Andreeva Beats Pegula in 'Diva Battle' to Reach WTA Finals Final at 19

Mirra Andreeva beat Jessica Pegula 6-3, 6-4 in the WTA Finals semifinal on Saturday, and the scoreline settles the week’s loudest subplot in the most direct way possible. Ten days ago Pegula was caught on a live microphone calling the 19-year-old “a bit of a diva” who “needs to be humbled”. On Saturday, in their first ever meeting, Andreeva beat her in straight sets to reach the final on her tournament debut, without having dropped a set all week. She is the youngest player to play for the WTA Finals title since Maria Sharapova in 2004, and on Sunday she gets a rematch with Elina Svitolina, who beat Linda Noskova 6-2, 6-1 in the second semifinal.

How did Andreeva win it?

By answering every time Pegula took the lead. Pegula broke early in both sets, going up 2-1 in the first after an Andreeva double fault and 3-1 in the second, and both times Andreeva broke straight back, the WTA reports. The first set turned on a single rally: Andreeva pounced on a looping Pegula shot and hit a forehand winner to break for 5-3, Reuters reports, and when Pegula earned break points as Andreeva served for the set, she shanked an overhead long and then put a backhand into the net. In the second set Andreeva took five of the final six games, sealing the win in one hour and 25 minutes when another Pegula backhand sailed long.

The numbers explain why the comebacks kept coming. Pegula finished with 32 unforced errors to 12 winners, the WTA reports, and Andreeva broke her four times, despite Pegula arriving off a career-high 16 aces against Linda Noskova in the group stage. “It was a tough match,” Andreeva said, Reuters reports. “You have to work hard to win a point against her. She is going to leave everything out there and make your life complicated, so I wanted to make her life complicated as well today.” It was her 54th win of the season.

What made the win historic?

The record book, not just the score. Andreeva is the youngest player to reach the WTA Finals final since Sharapova in 2004, and the first teenager to play for the title in 22 years, the Palm Springs Desert Sun reports. She is also the youngest semifinalist since Caroline Wozniacki in 2009, and she has won 48 games while dropping only 18 across her four matches, the fewest games dropped on the way to the final since the round-robin format was introduced in 2003. She is only the third player, after Serena Williams and Chris Evert, to win her first four WTA Finals matches in straight sets. The tournament itself moved from Riyadh to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden this year, Reuters reports, and the teenager who won the BNP Paribas Open on the same courts in 2025 has now made the place her own.

What was the ‘diva’ subplot?

A private conversation that was never meant to be heard. During a practice session on November 4, Pegula told her coach Mark Knowles that Andreeva was “a bit of a diva” who “needs to be humbled”, and that she had lost respect for coach Conchita Martinez, believing the exchange was off-mic. The WTA’s livestream caught it, and the row ran all week, as covered in the desk’s Pegula hot-mic story. The Desert Sun billed Saturday’s semifinal as “The Diva Battle”, and the two players had already defused it themselves: Andreeva posted a photo of the pair laughing together captioned “DIVAS”, and Pegula replied “Divas in Chanel”. Pegula had also praised Andreeva’s serve and movement as better than Coco Gauff’s in the same conversation, a compliment that got lost in the row. Saturday settled the tennis part of it, and the laughter suggests the rest of it was already settled.

How did Pegula lose a match she kept leading?

Because the lead never lasted. Pegula’s early breaks in both sets came from Andreeva errors, a double fault in the first and a backhand long in the second, and each time Andreeva reset and took the set back on her own terms, with a deft volley to break back in the second and a run of four straight games that Pegula only briefly interrupted with a hold at 5-4. The American’s 18 unforced errors in the first set alone, the WTA reports, meant she was beating herself as often as Andreeva was beating her. It is the same pattern as Andreeva’s group matches: she came from 4-1 down to beat Sabalenka 6-4, 6-0, winning the last 11 games, and she beat Svitolina 6-4, 6-0 in her opener before finishing the group against Shnaider. Pegula, who saved a match point to beat Noskova and reach the semifinal, found the same wall every other player in the draw has found this week.

What happens next?

Sunday’s final, at noon, against Elina Svitolina, and it is a rematch with a different shape to it than the first meeting. Svitolina won the second semifinal 6-2, 6-1 over Linda Noskova, the Desert Sun reports, dropping the first break of the match and then winning 10 of the last 11 games. Her route to the final is the mirror image of Andreeva’s: she lost to the teenager 6-4, 6-0 on Monday, then won two three-set matches against Karolina Muchova and Aryna Sabalenka to stay alive, and then produced the most one-sided semifinal of the day. “I’m a completely different player from the first match,” Svitolina said afterwards. She is the 2018 champion, back in the final for the first time since her runner-up finish in 2019, and she can become only the second woman to win the WTA Finals after returning to the tour after giving birth, after Kim Clijsters in 2010.

The final is the last match of a season in which Andreeva has already won the French Open and 54 matches, and a win would complete the rare WTA Finals sweep the Desert Sun flagged: five matches in the week, none of them dropping a set. It would also make her the ninth teenager to win a WTA Finals title, joining Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Steffi Graf, Gabriela Sabatini, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, Kim Clijsters and Maria Sharapova. Sabalenka’s week ended in the same building on Friday, and Gauff went out in the group stage, so the final is a new champion either way.