Tennis News

Eugenie Bouchard and Monica Puig will bid for first-round victories on Wednesday at the Crandon Park Tennis Center. We preview the must-see Miami Open matchups right here at wtatennis.com.

Wednesday

First round

Monica Puig (PUR #40) vs. Sorana Cirstea (ROU #65)
Head-to-head: Cirstea leads, 1-0
Key Stat: Puig is bidding for her 10^th tour-level win of the season on Wednesday.

Monica Puig will have the chance to take her solid 2017 to the next level at the Miami Open, and that challenge begins with a first-round matchup with Romania’s Sorana Cirstea. It will not be an easy task as Cirstea has defeated Puig in their lone meeting, but the Romanian has now lost five straight since reaching the round of 16 at the Australian Open and she has gone 3-8 lifetime at Miami with losses in her last three matches.

Puig has a semifinal (Doha) and a quarterfinal (Acapulco) to her name this season, but the Puerto Rican is still searching for a follow-through to her breakout Gold Medal performance at last year’s Olympics. Could it happen this year in Miami, where Puig has only won two previous matches but will no doubt receive a warm reception from her fans?

Pick: Puig in three

Eugenie Bouchard (CAN #56) vs. [WC] Ashleigh Barty (AUS #91)
Head-to-head: First meeting
Key Stat: Ashleigh Barty is the only player in 2017 to win the singles and doubles title at the same event, doing so at Kuala Lumpur.

Eugenie Bouchard had a relatively promising start to 2017 that saw her reach a semifinal at Sydney and advance to the third round at the Australian Open. But since then the Canadian has lost three straight. She’ll look to get her season on track again when she meets one of the surprising stories of 2017 in Australia’s Ashleigh Barty.

Barty has already doubled her 2016 tour-level win total and she claimed her first career title at Kuala Lumpur where she qualified before reeling off five straight victories. Bouchard will have her hands full with the upwardly mobile Aussie and she’ll have to be sharp with her passing game, as she’ll be contending with frequent forays to the net from Barty.

Pick: Bouchard in three

Ajla Tomjlanovic (CRO #594) vs. CiCi Bellis (USA #55)
Head-to-head: First meeting
Key Stat: Bellis reached the third round on her Miami Open debut in 2015.

Ajla Tomljanovic made her inspiring return to tennis after a year on the sidelines due to a shoulder injury by defeating Eugenie Bouchard in her first match in over a year at Acapulco. Since then she has lost two in a row but the good news for the powerful 23-year-old is that she’s finally in good health again and ready to start improving her ranking and fulfilling her vast potential on tour. But Tomjlanovic will have to contend with one of the feistiest young players in the game to get a win in Miami when she faces 17-year-old CiCi Bellis, who reached the third round as a 15-year-old Wildcard here in 2015.

Bellis started her season late due to a lower body injury but the California native reached the quarterfinals at Dubai in her first event, notching her first career Top 10 win over Agnieszka Radwanska in the process. Is Tomljanovic ready to contend with the all-out intensity of Bellis, or will it be Bellis who notches another impressive win in this young season?

Pick: Bellis in three

Lucie Safarova (CZE #36) vs. Yanina Wickmayer (BEL #67)
Head-to-head: Safarova leads, 2-1
Key Stat: Safarova has gone 4-4 against players ranked outside the Top 50 at Miami.

Lucie Safarova will look to continue her climb back up the WTA rankings in a place that has given her significant trouble in recent years. The Czech has lost six of her last seven matches at the Miami Open and has never been beyond the third round in eleven career main draw appearances.

On Wednesday she’ll look to exact some revenge on the woman that knocked her out of last year’s draw, Belgium’s Yanina Wickmayer. Safarova has already slipped by the Belgian once this year, defeating her in three sets at the Australian Open, but Wickmayer is a former quarterfinalist at Miami that also owns win over Kim Clijsters and Timea Bacsinszky at the event.

Pick: Safarova in two

By the Numbers:

1-4 – Eugenie’s lifetime record at Miami. The Canadian has lost four straight decisions here.

2016 – Though she fell in her first match last year, Lucie Safarova did claim the doubles title with Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

5 – Ashleigh Barty is one of five WTA players to have claimed a maiden title in 2017. Lauren Davis (Auckland), Katerina Siniakova (Shenzhen), Elise Mertens (Hobart) and Kristina Mladenovic (St. Petersburg) are the other four.

DALIAN, China – World No.145 Grace Min fought back from a set down to defeat top seed Wang Qiang in Friday’s quarterfinals at the Dalian Women’s Open.

Watch live streaming from Dalian all week right here.

The latest upset in a week full of surprises saw Min battle some early nerves before coming through, 5-7, 6-2, 6-3, in two hours and 22 minutes.

Min has spent much of the season piling up the win on the ITF Circuit, and looked a little out of her depth early on, dropping serve to love in the first game. This deficit did not last for long and while she was unable to rescue the set, she dominated the next two to secure a semifinal meeting against Misa Eguchi.

Unlike Min, Eguchi kept her time on court to a minimum, swatting aside last year’s runner-up, Julia Glushko, 6-2, 6-0.

In the bottom half of the draw, Kristyna Pliskova overpowered Aleksandra Krunic, 6-2, 6-4, in under an hour, while Han Xinyun recovered from a disastrous start to defeat Wang Yafan, 0-6, 7-5, 6-4.

Carla Suárez Navarro played some of the best tennis of her career at the Qatar Total Open to win her second career title and find herself one spot away from her season goal of reaching the Top 5.

The Spanish veteran dropped two games in the semifinals against reigning WTA Finals champion Agnieszka Radwanska, and recovered from a set down to dispatch 18-year-old Jelena Ostapenko, 1-6, 6-4, 6-4.

“I think in the final set I played really aggressive,” she told WTA Insider in the latest Champion’s Corner. “With my backhand I played more aggressive than with my forehand. I felt more confident today at the end of the match with my backhand. That helped me win the match.”

Suárez Navarro started the week ranked No.11,  but the title brought her ranking all the way up to a career-high of No.6.

“I feel really, really close. I know all the top players, I know if you want to be in the Top 5 you have to have good tournaments like this or like Melbourne to take points. Also, at the tournaments where there are all the top players, I know I’m close.

“But I know the year is very long. I want to take the experience of last year where I start really good but I lost confidence a little bit and I couldn’t end the year inside the Top 10. But I know the key and I know the things I have to do to be there. But I’m really excited about No.6 and I’m really close to No.5.”

 Starting the year well, Suárez Navarro reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open for the first time since 2009 when she upset then-World No.6 Venus Williams in the second round.

“I started really good in Melbourne. I had good matches there. I lost to Aga. I want to take the experience of last year to play better in the Grand Slams. The Grand Slams are really important tournaments and when you are in the Top 20, you want to win good tournaments, big tournaments. You have to be there.

“I think the key is working and practicing really hard.”

With plenty of hard work and momentum from the Middle East Swing, Suárez Navarro appears poised for a breakout spring as February’s WTA Player Of The Month!

Final Results for February’s WTA Player Of The Month

1. Carla Suárez Navarro (44%)
2. Roberta Vinci (40%)
3. Sara Errani (16%)

2016 WTA Player of the Month Winners

January: Angelique Kerber

How it works:

Finalists are selected by wtatennis.com
Winner is then determined by a fan vote on wtatennis.com 

MIAMI, FL, USA — She reached the quarterfinals in her Miami Open debut a year ago, and Johanna Konta’s 2017 tournament is off to a winning start after the No.10 seed survived a game effort by Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus, 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-4 in the second round on Friday night.

“I’m definitely satisfied with how I came back in the third set and just competed,” Konta said after the match. “Basically just did the best that I could with what I had. It was very difficult conditions — not just the wind, but also the rain, quite a little bit of stop and start. It was about managing your expectations for any sort of level for the match but also any sort of frustrations that would arise because of the conditions — just keeping things in good perspective, fighting and competing. She played quite well, and I really had to fight hard and work for it in the end.”

Konta cruised in the 33-minute opener, winning four straight games from 2-2 to take a one-set lead. The Brit surrendered just seven points on serve in the first set, while winning 50 percent of the points on Sasnovich’s delivery. She remained in command for much of the early going in the second, building a 6-2, 4-2 lead, but Sasnovich got a foothold in the match with a key break of serve in the seventh game — her first of the match.

From there, the set went with serve until the tie-break, with Konta forced to save break points at 4-4 as Sasnovich looked to win a third straight game, before the qualifier found her forehand late, striking several winners to earn herself a deciding set.

Sasnovich is still fighting hard! #MiamiOpen pic.twitter.com/QCsVJZrVJd

— WTA (@WTA) March 24, 2017

After the pair traded breaks to begin the final set, a second break in the fifth game keyed the victory for Konta, as she held serve the rest of the way to emerge victorious in the two hour, 39 minute encounter.

.@JoKonta91 holds off Sasnovich 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-4!

Advances to @MiamiOpen Third round! pic.twitter.com/sE09QZUTam

— WTA (@WTA) March 25, 2017

Also through on Day 4 was Madison Keys, who surrendered just three games en route to dispatching Viktorija Golubic, 6-1, 6-2 in 67 minutes. Dropping serve just once, the No.8 seed broke five times to sail through to the third round.

“The key today was definitely staying calm, because the conditions were not great,” Keys told WTA Insider after the match. “[I was] staying focused on playing my game, having good serves, kind of just focusing on what I could control.”

.@Madison_Keys eases past Golubic 6-1, 6-2 in @MiamiOpen Second round! pic.twitter.com/yre4lQohmf

— WTA (@WTA) March 24, 2017

Keys, who began her 2017 at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells following a lay-off from wrist surgery, reached the fourth round in her first tournament back, and feels as though it hasn’t taken her very long to get back in the swing of competitive tennis.

“I feel pretty good,” Keys said. “There’s obviously still some points where it’s more the mental, where it’s, ‘That was a bad decision’ — that’s where I feel like I’m still not 100 percent happy with myself all of the time. That’s one thing the one thing that I really want to look to improve on.”

Keys will next face Spain’s Lara Arruabarrena, who defeated No.28 seed Irina-Camelia Begu in three sets, but Patricia Maria Tig and Sorana Cirstea made it three Romanians in the third round behind a pair of second-round upsets of their own.

Tig recorded her first win against a top 20 player in defeating Kristina Mladenovic, 7-6(5), 6-2, while Cirstea was victorious in the conclusion of a rain-delayed match against No.19 seed Anastasija Sevastova, 7-6(4), 3-6, 6-3.

Tig also led a trio of qualifiers to advance to the third round, as Anett Kontaveit scored an upset over No.32 seed Ekaterina Makarova, 6-7(1), 6-2, 6-2 and American Taylor Townsend handled No.25 seed Roberta Vinci, 6-3, 6-2.