It started in 2024 at the Iasi Open. Then-seventeen-year-old Mirra Andreeva turned heads with her maiden WTA title, becoming the youngest-ever to win the trophy since Coco Gauff. But she gave the onlookers something beyond just the win. “I would also like to thank myself for always fighting till the end, especially today with such a tough battle. I would like to thank myself for not quitting and just staying out there and fighting my, I don’t know if I can say this, a** off.” This was the start of a tradition, one that continued to Andreeva’s latest win at the Roland Garros. The 19-year-old has now revealed that the courtesy of this idea for a signature speech goes entirely to Snoop Dogg.

 On Tuesday at Roland Garros, the journalist who had asked Andreeva about the tradition finally got the whole story. “Well, I’ll be honest, at first when I said this speech, I just saw Snoop Dogg say it on, I don’t know, wherever, when he was receiving an award,” Andreeva said. “So for the first couple of times, I kind of stole it just to, you know, make a joke.” It is the kind of admission that only makes the tradition more endearing.

A teenage tennis player sees a rap icon accept an award on the internet, borrows the line for a laugh, and then makes it her own. But then something shifted. “After, I kind of realized that it’s actually true,” she said. “We also have to thank ourselves for the work that we do on the court and for how much we sacrifice and for how much we practice and for how much we work. So I felt like now it’s just what I really want to tell myself almost every time.”

Last year at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, Andreeva won her first WTA 1000 title. In her speech she said, “I would like to thank me. I know what I have been dealing with, and I just want to thank me for always believing in me. I want to thank me for never quitting and always dealing with the pressure. Today was not easy but I chose to be there 100 per cent so I thank myself for that,” she said in her victory speech.

The bit had become a brand, and the brand had become a belief for the young Russian.

The Snoop Dogg speech that inspired this bit came from the 2018 moment, where the rapper thanked himself after receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Last, but not least, I want to thank me. I want to thank me for believing in me. I want to thank me for doing all this hard work. I want to thank me for having no days off. I want to thank me for never quitting… I want to thank me for just being me at all times. Snoop Dogg, you a bad motherf**ker.”

What makes it resonate outside the humor is the underlying meaning. Andreeva is 19 years old and has competed on the WTA Tour since she was 15. She has been open about the psychological work she does in addition to tennis, including sessions with a sports psychologist who taught her the stop sign technique. She now uses it to quiet negative thoughts during matches. Thanking herself aloud after a victory is the public manifestation of the same philosophy: recognizing the effort rather than just the outcome.

The results are starting to match the rituals for Mirra Andreeva

The speech is funnier when the tennis backs it up, which it is doing right now. On Tuesday, Andreeva defeated Sorana Cirstea 6-0, 6-3 in 56 minutes to advance to the 2026 French Open semifinals, her second career Grand Slam semifinal. The first came in 2024, when she fell to Jasmine Paolini. Iga Swiatek has already been eliminated in round four by Marta Kostyuk, Andreeva’s next opponent.

“I just found myself being very, very focused, very aggressive, going for my shots all the time,” Andreeva said after the Cirstea win. “I honestly didn’t expect that myself.” She has accumulated 20 clay-court wins this season. She is into the last four in Paris as the world no. 8, having entered this tournament largely in the shadow of the bigger names, most of whom are no longer there.

Mirra Andreeva will face No. 15 seed Marta Kostyuk in the semifinals, a player she has beaten once this season. Kostyuk is riding high after defeating Swiatek in the fourth round and her own Ukrainian compatriot, Elina Svitolina, in the quarter finals. If Andreeva makes it through, she will stand in a Roland Garros final at the age of 19, thanking her opponent, her team, the crowd, and, of course, herself. Snoop Dogg would probably approve.