A mere formality for the title holder!

Mirra Andreeva returns to her Californian garden wearing the boss’s outfit, with a maturity that seems to have deepened even further during the off-season. Her partnership with Conchita Martínez has turned her ironclad defense into controlled aggression, allowing her to cut off trajectories much earlier than she did at the start of her career. Across the net, Solana Sierra is discovering the thrill of the big main draws and, despite her convincing first-round win, she’s facing a tactical mountain. The Argentine has a modest win ratio against top 10 players and risks running into the wall of consistency imposed by the Russian, who knows perfectly how to use the slowness of the surface to construct her points.

The match-up looks particularly complex for Solana Sierra because her comfort zones, especially her cross-court backhand, match precisely the areas where Mirra Andreeva excels on the counter. The defending champion has a wide variety of shots, including disguised drop shots and changes of pace, which should quickly deprive the Argentine of the rhythm she needs to express her game. While Sierra showed good mental fortitude to close out the match against Stearns, the physical challenge imposed by Andreeva’s baseline rallies seems beyond what her current abilities can handle. Stearns is coming off a win and had mentally eased off in her match against Sierra.