Courtside Changeover: Week 1 rewind from the Miami Open

MIAMI -- Through the first four days here at the Miami Open, it was anything but the chaos of March Madness. 

Surprises can be fun and change is inevitable, but … while all four men’s semifinalists at Indian Wells lost their opening matches in South Florida, form among the female favorites largely prevailed. 

On Sunday, though, a Filipino teenager shook up the draw with a straight-sets win over Australian Open champion Madison Keys. That was about as big an upset as you can imagine. Alexandra Eala has won three main-draw matches in Miami -- more than all other players from the Philippines in the Open Era. Keys’ No. 5 PIF WTA Ranking was 135 spots higher than Eala’s.

Still, at the end of play on Sunday, the Sweet 16 had a familiar glow. 

Five of the Top 6 seeds -- in order, Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula and Jasmine Paolini -- are all still viable. So are defending champion Danielle Collins, four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka and 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu.

All eight Round of 16 matches are scheduled for Monday. Hope you’re working from home -- if not, you have our permission to call in sick.

For those who have been following along -- and, particularly, those who haven’t (you know who you are) -- we present Courtside Changeover, a look at the week that was -- and a sneak peek at what’s coming up:

Week 1 Superlatives

Serving up a clean shutout

Coco Gauff's 6-0, 6-0 win over Sofia Kenin was her second shutout at the tour level, following her first-round defeat of Arantxa Rus last year in Madrid. Gauff followed it up with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Maria Sakkari. The key? Forgetting about those bagels.

 “I didn’t want to think about it,” Gauff said, “because this is a one-every-couple-years type occurrence.” 

Match of the Week

Naomi Osaka was a 7-6 (6), 3-6, 6-4 third-round winner over qualifier Hailey Baptiste. Serving to level the third set at 5-all, Baptiste got it to deuce, but Osaka won the next two points -- and the match. Osaka finished with 112 points, two more than Baptiste. The match ran a gargantuan 2 hours, 59 minutes (and 57 seconds).

“This year I’ve played already a couple scrappy matches,” Osaka said. “I think the fight kind of got me over it. I realized you need to play a lot of matches like that to be, I guess, one of the great ones.

The four-time Grand Slam champion is already in that category. If this match is any indication, the year after a 15-month maternity leave she might be rounding back into form.

Breathtaking breakthrough

Lost in the wake of Eala’s stunner, Victoria Mboko, an 18-year-old from Canada, scored her first tour-level win over Camila Osorio in the first round. She fell to No. 10 seed Paula Badosa -- in a third-set tiebreak -- but might have the best record in all of tennis this year: 28-2, including five ITF titles.

Point of the tournament

This from Viktoriya Tomova against Caty McNally in the first round:

Numbers don’t lie

Best stat (by far)

From the desk of the incomparable Nicolò Tonato, senior data editor for Stats Perform: When Emma Navarro and Emma Raducanu met Friday it was the first time two players with the same first name played each other at the Miami Open for the first time since Elena Vesnina and Elena Likhovtseva in 2008.

Honorable mention: Swiatek is the first player to reach the Round of 16 for 25 consecutive appearances in WTA 1000 events since the format was introduced in 2009.

Out of service

No. 7 seed Elena Rybakina won 22 straight points on serve in her second-round encounter with Ashlyn Krueger -- including all 16 points in the second set. And still lost the match.

Retro moment

Thirteen years after they played in the Australian Open junior girls’ singles final, Taylor Townsend and Yulia Putintseva met in the second round here. Townsend was the winner with this manic scoreline: 7-6 (2), 1-6, 6-1. Townsend won the first one by a similar score, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3.

An ode to Andreeva

Quote of the Week

“I still can’t believe that it happened so fast because it was one of my dreams. Now that it already happened, I feel like … what am I supposed to do now?” --  Mirra Andreeva on her rapid rise

But …

After a standout run, Mirra Andreeva finally hit a wall. In a late-night Sunday showdown, she fell to Amanda Anisimova in a hard-fought match that pushed the three-hour mark. 

Still …

Her Miami run might be over, but Mirra Andreeva scored a different kind of win last week -- a message from LeBron James himself.

The 17-year-old has been channeling the NBA legend all season, quoting his mindset in interviews and leaning on his words during matches. After her comeback over Aryna Sabalenka at Indian Wells, she referenced him again, and this time, LeBron noticed.

He reposted her quote on Instagram with a message that lit up her week: “Congratulations! Happy to have helped. But honestly, YOU did THAT!! All your hard work, drive, and dedication toward your craft. KEEP GOING! Strive for greatness.”

Asked about it in Miami, Andreeva couldn’t stop smiling: “I’m going to print it and put it on the wall,” she said. “It’s not every day you get a message from LeBron James.”

Not a bad week -- even if it didn’t end in a win.

Odds, ends & aces

An (underhanded) surprise

Up 6-2, 5-1 and holding match point, Marta Kostyuk went underhand -- because why not? It landed, of course, and so did the win over Anna Blinkova.

Living on the edge

Winners who survived at least one match point: Kimberly Birrell over Anastasia Potapova and Alycia Parks over Varvara Gracheva, both in the first round.

Ask me again in 10 years

Mothers are currently enjoying a high-profile moment on the Hologic WTA Tour, but World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka says she has no plans to join them any time soon. The topic surfaced a few days before her first match at the Miami Open and Sabalenka, always a jokester, interjected, “My team is stressed right now from that question.” Later, she added, “It actually gives me hope that maybe one day, I don’t know, five, seven, 10 years, maybe -- who knows when -- I’ll be able to do that.”

Hut-hut!

Emma Raducanu: She’s struggled for three-plus years since winning the US Open, but looks back on track with three main-draw wins here at the Miami Open. The secret sauce? It just might be her new warmup routine that includes tossing a football with strength and conditioning coach Yutaka Nakamura.

“My trainer has been teaching me, because he’s lived in America and knows how to throw it really well,” Raducanu reports. “I have just been working on tightening the spiral a little bit.”

Could she help the Dolphins who play games here in Hard Rock Stadium?

“No,” said Raducanu, shaking her head.

Raducanu dropped only a single game in her third-round match Sunday when McCartney Kessler retired down 6-1, 3-0.

Looking ahead: Monday’s blockbuster schedule

From Grand Slam champs to rising wild cards, Monday’s Miami Open schedule might be the most compelling day of the tournament yet.

No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka vs. No. 14 Danielle Collins
No. 2 Iga Swiatek vs. No. 22 Elina Svitolina
No. 3 Coco Gauff vs. Magda Linette
No. 4 Jessica Pegula vs. No. 23 Marta Kostyuk
No. 6 Jasmine Paolini vs. Naomi Osaka
No. 9 Zheng Qinwen vs. Ashlyn Krueger
No. 10 Paula Badosa vs. Alexandra Eala
No. 17 Amanda Anisimova vs. Emma Raducanu

Which brings us to this question