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Canadian Bianca Andreescu and Can-American Carson Branstine meet Wednesday in the second round of Wimbledon qualifying.
Only one can win, so only one will have an opportunity to get back to the All-England Club for the main draw.
Here’s a piece from the Wimbledon website setting it up.
So this is a fun opportunity to flash all the way back to 2017 when they were both junior-aged. Andreescu was playing her first qualifying at Roehampton in the pro division, and Branstine played her first (and only) junior event at the All-England Club proper.
Tennis is a trip, man. At the time, Andreescu had just completed her junior career and was a rising pro who qualified for her first Grand Slam main draw. Branstine, just three months younger, was still in the juniors, headed to a peak ranking of No. 4 in the world. But she had a road ahead that would involve four surgeries and a lot of self-doubt.
Only a month ago – eight years later, at age 24 – did Branstine even made it as far as the qualifying of a Grand Slam for the first time.
2017 – the good old days
Andreescu had just turned 17, and was just officially turning pro. Her Grand Slam pro debut had come the previous month at Roland Garros, where she lost in the first round of qualifying to Tereza Smitkova.
She had better luck at Roehampton: she defeated Kayla Day, Akiko Omae and Viktoria Hrunchova (then Kuzmova) to make the main draw – all in straight sets.
Here’s what those final moments looked like.
And here’s a photo gallery of that journey.
Fresh from a junior title
Andreescu’s junior finale was the previous month at Roland Garros, where she lost to Claire Liu in the quarterfinals – but she and Branstine combined to win the doubles, over Olesya Pervushina and Anastasia Potapova in the final. They dropped just one set along the way.
It was only their second tournament together as a doubles team; Branstine had just switched representation from American to Canadian at the beginning of that season.
The other was the 2017 Australian Open juniors – and they won that one too, over Maja Chwalinska and some young girl named Iga Swiatek in the final.
Andreescu and Abanda at the AELTC
That year, Andreescu was joined by fellow Canadian Françoise Abanda in the main draw.
Here they are practicing before their first rounds. (Andreescu lost to Kristina Kucova; Abanda – who defeated Anna Kalinskaya, Alla Kudryavtseva and Zhu Lin to make the main draw and beat Kurumi Nara in the first round, gave freshly-minted Roland Garros champion Jelena Ostapenko everything she could handle before going down 6-3 in the third set).
New Canadian Branstine carries on
Branstine, who was still 16, continued on at the Wimbledon juniors without Andreescu.
And in her only appearance at that level, did very well.
She made the quarterfinals in singles, losing to Liu (as Andreescu had in Paris). Liu ended up winning the tournament.
Here’s what she looked like then.
Branstine also picked up a decent replacement in doubles for Andreescu: she and Marta Kostyuk won the Roehampton warmup event, and made he semifinals at Wimbledon.
So if most of you hadn’t really heard of her until the last few weeks, her peers knew who she was.
Since then, life got real. The pandemic, FOUR surgeries, three universities, a college degree and now, making moves as a pro at age 24.
Early days as a Canadian
The previous fall (Oct. 2016), not yet quite sorted on the paperwork side for her new status, Branstine was in Toronto playing the Tevlin Challenger ITF.
Here’s what she looked like then (the on-court angst wasn’t much different).
2018: Andreescu out in qualifying
A year later, having broken into the top 200 playing $25,000 ITFs and making the final round of qualifying at Roland Garros, Andreescu returned to Roehampton.
She lost in the final round of qualifying to Antonia Lottner of Germany, ranked about 60 spots higher.
A year later in 2019, she was a different player. She won Indian Wells – but then shen barely played until she won in Toronto and the US Open over the summer.
In 2020, there was no Wimbledon.
In 2021, she was the No. 5 seed, but was trounced by Alizé Cornet (who also is in the qualifying this year, having come out of a brief retirement) 6-2, 6-1 in the first round.
In 2022, she lost to Elena Rybakina, ranked No. 23, in the second round. No one could have predicted Rybakina would win the tournament.
In 2023 and 2024, Andreescu made the third round. The 2023 loss was to Ons Jabeur, who made the final. In 2024 it was to Jasmine Paolini – who made the final.
In 2025, her big challenge is just making it to the big show.
For Branstine, it would be a debut, after a long journey.
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Impressive
Branstine: FOUR surgeries. 2 knees, 2 hips, I guess, had to be re-aligned. At 16-17, I told her, in a tweet I guess, she had to do something to correct issue. She blocked me, Didn’t do much on it until the univ paid for the surgeries I guess, when she might have discovered I was right, even though I thought only about physio work. She’s improved a lot her tennis lately. Glad to see the results of her sacrifices and support from those 3 universities. She didn.t play much for the first 2, Wonderful now. BTW, don’t have to publish this.
You seem to have that effect on a lot of people, Jerry.
You might want to reflect on that, and maybe work on it.
That’s a shitty message. I’m sure the one you sent her was worse.