World No. 6 Mirra Andreeva failed to turn the page this week after suffering another shock loss at this week's WTA 500 tournament in Ningbo.
Last year, Andreeva finished as runner-up in her Ningbo debut. This year, she had a first-round bye before 219th-ranked Zhu Lin handed her a stunning 4-6 6-3 6-2 defeat.
For the Russian - who was the top seed in Ningbo - it was her third consecutive defeat. Previously, the two-time WTA 1000 champion was upset by Sonay Kartal in the Beijing round-of-16 and Laura Siegemund in her Wuhan opener.
While Andreeva has been struggling since making the Wimbledon quarterfinal, the feeling is that it has only gotten worse over the last couple of weeks. One thing that has also been concerning in particular is the fact that the 18-year-old simply isn't managing to win three-set matches - all of her last three clashes went into a decider and she failed to get over the finish line.
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Andreeva insisted that she learned a key lesson
When addressing her North American swing struggles, Andreeva said at the start of the Asian swing that she learned that she could not win every match she played.
You cannot win every match that you play. You cannot win every tournament that you play. So its kind of a normal thing to lose and obviously sometimes when youre super close to win the match, it hurts a little bit more. It takes a little bit more time to kind of step back and just forget about that. Its just life. Its just how tennis works. And with time, I learned how to kind of accept it and move on from tough losses," the 18-year-old recently said.
When Andreeva made this statement, one would think that it would help relax the pressure and tension she was feeling. But so far, it hasn't happened.
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It remains to be seen if Andreeva can find at least some spark before the season ends.
