Tournament News

Courtside Changeover: Week 1 rewind from the Miami Open

6m read 1mo ago
Emma Raducanu
Jimmie48/WTA

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

View Profile . That was about as big an upset as you can imagine. Alexandra Eala
View Profile
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

View Profile , Iga Swiatek
View Profile
, Coco Gauff
View Profile
, Jessica Pegula
View Profile
and Jasmine Paolini
View Profile
-- are all still viable. So are defending champion Danielle Collins
View Profile
, four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka
View Profile
and 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu
View Profile
.

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

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

View Profile was a 7-6 (6), 3-6, 6-4 third-round winner over qualifier Hailey Baptiste
View Profile
. 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

View Profile , an 18-year-old from Canada, scored her first tour-level win over Camila Osorio
View Profile
in the first round. She fell to No. 10 seed Paula Badosa
View Profile
-- 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

View Profile against Caty McNally in the first round:

Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time 0:00
 
1x
    • Chapters
    • descriptions off, selected
    • captions off, selected

      Hot shot: Viktoriya Tomova hustles, twists and finds the angle in Miami

      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

      View Profile and Emma Raducanu
      View Profile
      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

      View Profile won 22 straight points on serve in her second-round encounter with Ashlyn Krueger
      View Profile
      -- 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

      View Profile and Yulia Putintseva
      View Profile
      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

      View Profile on her rapid rise

      But …

      After a standout run, Mirra Andreeva

      View Profile finally hit a wall. In a late-night Sunday showdown, she fell to Amanda Anisimova
      View Profile
      in a hard-fought match that pushed the three-hour mark. 

      Still …

      Her Miami run might be over, but Mirra Andreeva

      View Profile 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

      View Profile 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

      View Profile went underhand -- because why not? It landed, of course, and so did the win over Anna Blinkova
      View Profile
      .

      Video Player is loading.
      Current Time 0:00
      Duration 0:00
      Loaded: 0%
      Stream Type LIVE
      Remaining Time 0:00
       
      1x
        • Chapters
        • descriptions off, selected
        • captions off, selected
        • en (Main), selected

        Watch this: Marta Kostyuk's underarm serve ace on match point in Miami

        Living on the edge

        Winners who survived at least one match point: Kimberly Birrell

        View Profile over Anastasia Potapova
        View Profile
        and Alycia Parks
        View Profile
        over Varvara Gracheva
        View Profile
        , 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

        View Profile 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

        View Profile 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

        View Profile vs. No. 14 Danielle Collins
        View Profile

        No. 2 Iga Swiatek
        View Profile
        vs. No. 22 Elina Svitolina
        View Profile

        No. 3 Coco Gauff
        View Profile
        vs. Magda Linette
        View Profile

        No. 4 Jessica Pegula
        View Profile
        vs. No. 23 Marta Kostyuk
        View Profile

        No. 6 Jasmine Paolini
        View Profile
        vs. Naomi Osaka
        View Profile

        No. 9 Zheng Qinwen vs. Ashlyn Krueger
        View Profile

        No. 10 Paula Badosa
        View Profile
        vs. Alexandra Eala
        View Profile

        No. 17 Amanda Anisimova
        View Profile
        vs. Emma Raducanu
        View Profile

        Which brings us to this question