Wins return as Andreescu finds her joy for tennis again

MIAMI - Canada's Bianca Andreescu heads into Monday's last-16 of the Miami Open brimming with confidence and feeling she has finally refound her love for tennis.

Andreescu burst onto the scene with a stunning US Open win as a teenager in 2019 and rose to number five in the world that year.

But then her career stalled.

Injury in 2020 sidelined her and then the COVID pandemic blocked any chance of regaining momentum and at the end of the following year she decided to take six months off.

"It was honestly me wanting to figure out if I really want to continue playing tennis because I was literally about to just drop my racquets and just say, screw this," she said on Sunday.

"I wasn't happy at all. I wasn't happy basically for the full year of 2021 and I thought that if I continue like this, it's just going to get worse. 

"So I was like, OK, let's take a break. Hopefully that helps. And it really did. My heart did grow fonder for the sport and now I appreciate it in a much different way than I did before that break," she said.

In Miami, Andreescu has had a tough draw but has beaten two other former Grand Slam winners in Emma Raducanu and Sofia Kenin as well as seventh seed Maria Sakkari.

On Monday she will face Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova for a place in the quarter-finals.

Those results leave her unsurprisingly in a positive mood, but she says one of the keys to her overall happiness and balanced approach to the sport has been how she handles setbacks and defeats.

"Obviously there were ups and downs, but for the most part, I was very, I guess, level throughout 2022, even with the losses. 

"I was like, it's fine. I'll go have dinner with my team. I'll go watch a movie, whatever, and not lock myself in the room for three days like I used to," she said.