Mirra Andreeva & Diana Shnaider are a force to be reckoned with, having paired up for the Paris Olympics and coming away with the Silver medal, and each rising up into the Top 20 of the doubles rankings since.
“Every time I’m at the net, I’m, like, ‘You guys don’t stand a chance because with her stroking’. She could go down the line, she could go cross-court, she could go low, she could go short cross, you never know what she’s going to do. Mirra Andreeva
Now the Russian pair have added the WTA 1000 Miami Open presented by Itaú doubles title to their list of growing accomplishments, their second and highest-level doubles title of their careers.
They teamed up to win the WTA 500 in Brisbane in January, and also reached the Australian Open semi-finals later that month.
On Sunday, Andreeva & Shnaider won an all-unseeded doubles final in Miami, outlasting Spain’s Cristina Bucsa & Miyu Kato from Japan, 6-3 6-7(5) [10-2], after an hour and 36 minutes of on-court action to prevail.
“I had pretty much a lot of pressure when we couldn’t close it in the second set, but then in the super-breaker we just played amazing,” said Andreeva, who will head home for a two-week rest before beginning her clay-court season in Stuttgart, Germany in mid-April.
“We were super-focused, and we stayed together, and we fought for every point and, I think, we had a lot of driving adrenaline, and both of us had a lot of energy, and we just played the best tennis.”
The match was interrupted by a five-and-a-half hour rain delay in the middle of the match, when the Russians were leading 3-0, but the contest became a very tight affair when play resumed.
The final fielded 3 players who had won women’s doubles medals at last year’s Olympics at Roland Garros, with Bucsa earning the Bronze alongside her Spanish compatriot, Sara Sorribes Tormo.
Bucsa & Kato got their season going with their run in Miami, having recorded a 0-5 win/loss ratio as a pair this year, but they finally grabbed their first team win of 2025 in the 1st-round, and then went on a tear, including an upset of Czech Katerina Siniakova & Taylor Townsend from the USA, the No 1 seeds, in the semi-finals.
Andreeva & Shnaider, though, stopped them going all the way to the title, making the early stages of the final look fairly routine by taking a set-and-a-break lead at 6-3, 3-2.
With deft hands, Bucsa & Kato pulled themselves back into contention, leading the clash into a second-set tiebreak, where well-timed volley winners helped them steal the set in come-back fashion and level the match.
(L-R) Miami Open runners-up Cristina Busca & Miyu Kato with champions Diana Shnaider & Mirra Andreeva, posing with their trophies during the presentation ceremony
© Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
Then, in the following decisive 10-point match tiebreak, it was the devastating rallying power of Andreeva & Shnaider that took charge once again, with Shnaider’s lefty forehand in particular wearing down the opponents and Andreeva finding a forehand passing winner down the line to earn 7 championship points at 9-2.
They only needed one, as a strong Shnaider serve was followed up by an Andreeva put-away, sending them to their biggest title, and near the top of the PIF Race standings.
17-year old Andreeva and 20-year old Shnaider, who are both ranked inside the Top 15 of the singles rankings, had battled down to the wire to hoist the trophy.
Andreeva wrote ‘MI-DI champs!’, a nickname they were given at the Olympics for the first two letters of their Christian names, and she praised her left-handed partner for setting her up at the net to make easy volley winners.
“Every time I’m at the net, I’m, like, ‘You guys don’t stand a chance because with her stroking’, she could go down the line, she could go cross-court, she could go low, she could go short cross, you never know what she’s going to do,” Andreeva said.
The champions split $457,150 and earned 1000 ranking points, while the runner-ups split $242,000 and amassed 650 ranking points.
On Monday, Andreeva & Shnaider are projected to become the No 2 doubles team in the PIF Race to the WTA Finals, trailing only the top-ranked team of Siniakova & Townsend.
