US Open champion Bianca Andreescu has won the WTA Newcomer of the Year award, which is awarded to the player who made their Top 100 debut or made notable accomplishments for the first time during the 2019 season.
She picked up 67% of the vote, which was decided upon by the media.
Read more: 2019 WTA Player Award Winners Announced
The 19-year-old enjoyed a stellar year that saw her storm to WTA World No.5 off the back of her success in New York, in which she defeated Serena Williams, 6-3, 7-5 in the final to become the first Canadian player - male or female - to lift a title of such prestige.
Her high ranking is all the more remarkable given that she was only able to play 13 tournaments because of injury, while she played through the pain barrier at the Shiseido WTA Finals Shenzhen before ultimately having to retire midway through her second match against Karolina Pliskova.
By the end of 2019, she posted a win-loss ratio that was 37-7 in her favor, while she enjoyed a 16-match winning streak from the beginning of the Rogers Cup in August that ran through until Beijing, when she was finally unseated by Naomi Osaka in a three-set classic. During that sequence, she played four Top 10 players.
Indeed, in completed matches over the last year, her only losses came in matches that went the distance.
“I kind of forgot how it feels to lose,” Andreescu, who had to qualify for the Australian Open in January, said after beating Aliaksandra Sasnovich in Beijing, her first match as a major winner.
The Canadian scored her first Top 10 win in the first week of the year in Auckland, defeating erstwhile WTA World No.3 Caroline Wozniacki, and went from strength to strength thereafter.
She won Indian Wells and the Rodgers Cup before her remarkable breakthrough in major at Flushing Meadows. Before winning the US Open, she had never previously been beyond the second round of a Grand Slam event.
The teenager beat out 15-year-old sensation Coco Gauff to claim the award, while Karolina Muchova, Elena Rybakina, Iga Swiatek and Dayana Yastremska were also nominated for the prize.
