Pegula last American woman standing at Miami Open
03.24.25
By Harvey Fialkov
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Danielle Collins rescued an injured dog in the streets of Miami earlier this week and named him Crash.
On another glorious, yet toasty afternoon for tennis at the Miami Open Masters 1000 presented by Itaú, Collins, the defending champion, crashed out of her round-of-16 clash with top-ranked Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, 6-4, 6-4 on Stadium Court at Hard Rock Stadium.
Also crashing out again in her hometown tournament was Coco Gauff, the third seed from Delray Beach, who was dispatched by 33-year-old Pole Magda Linette, 6-4, 6-4. Gauff, who turned 21 a few weeks ago, has never reached the Miami quarters in six attempts.
It was a brutal day for four of five American women as only 4th-seeded Jessica Pegula survived the sweet 16 with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over 29th-ranked Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine to reach her fourth consecutive Miami quarterfinal (also two semis). Pegula, 31, trailed 1-3 in the second set and won the last five games as a gimpy Kostyuk went down meekly.
“That’s a bummer there’s not anymore of us left, especially being in the U.S.,’’ Pegula said. “I’m happy to carry the flag to the next day, into the next round and hopefully I can represent the best I can for the rest of the tournament.
“It’s nice, but not nice to know you’re the one that’s the last one left in a sense, so hopefully I can use that for motivation with the crowd here. Hopefully that means the crowd will really be behind me every single match and I can use that to my advantage as well.”
Pegula, who defeated Russian Anna Kalinskaya in the third round, cringed when told both times she beat her she went on to win the tournament (2024 Berlin finals and 2019 Washington, D.C. for her first title).
“Don’t tell me that,’’ laughed Pegula, who will play surging Brit Emma Raducanu, who she is 1-1 with, including a marathon loss on the grass at Eastbourne last year.
The Cinderella run continued for energetic wild card Alexandra Eala, as the 19-year-old Filipino didn’t have to hit a ball to advance to her first ATP Tour quarterfinal at any level when 10th-seeded Spaniard Paula Badosa gave her a walkover because of a back injury sustained in her third-round win over Dane Clara Tauson on Sunday.
Eala, who already made history as the first Filipino to down Grand Slam champions this week (Jelena Ostapenko and Madison Keys), will see her 140th rank soar to at least 107 on Monday. Eala will have to go up another level when she meets second-ranked Iga Swiatek, after the Pole earned a hard-fought 7-6 (5), 6-3 victory over Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina that ended Tuesday morning.
Swiatek, the 2022 Miami Open champion, joins Linette, marking the second time two Polish women reached the quarters of a WTA 1000 event (2024 Wuhan, Linette and Magdalena Frech).
Despite spraying 19 forehand errors, when the chips were on the table she cashed in with line-scraping, inside-out forehand winners in the tiebreaker.
Svitolina trailed 1-4 in the second, but was one point away from knotting it at 4-4 on her serve when she butchered a high forehand in front of her husband Gael Monfils, who is first on Stadium Court on Tuesday at noon. Swiatek’s 21st win surpasses Mirra Andreeva’s 20 for most this year.
Since reaching the quarterfinals of the Australian Open, Gauff has gone 4-4 without getting out of the fourth round of three consecutive Masters 1000s.
“It wasn’t great today and it hasn’t been for the last two weeks so I’m just trying to figure that out,’’ said Gauff, who threw in 12 double-faults. “Everything, serve, return, forehand, backhand, everything honestly. It’s just one of those days I felt off on everything on the court.”
Gauff seemed to right the ship in the second set with a break to draw even at 3-3 and then went up 4-3 on consecutive aces. But it was all Linette from there, who is now 1-2 against Gauff and 6-28 against Top 10 players. After the victory, Linette wrote on the camera lens: “30 is looking good!” She then crossed off 30 and put her correct age at 33.
“It was really important for me to keep pressing Coco’s serve,’’ said Linette, who avenged a quarterfinal loss to Gauff at a Wuhan Masters last year. “Make sure she feels the pressure. I was returning well and was really brave. I was able to back it up with solid service games. She’s really tough when you manage to break because she’s so competitive.”
Linette will play Italian backboard, the sixth-seeded Jasmime Paolini, who outhit former No. 1 Naomi Osaka in a 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory, in which she saved 12-of-15 break points on her serve.
“I tried to stay there every point, trying to serve a little better on the important points,’’ said Paolini, who after reaching the three previous Masters 1000, finally got to the quarters. “She’s tough to play against because of so many fast rallies so you have to take your chance when you can. I was running like crazy at the end.”
As for Linette, Paolini simply said that, “She’s a consistent player, forehand, backhand, serve, she’s complete.”
All 16 women played their round-of-16 matches on Monday, including 17th-ranked Amanda Anisimova, the longtime South Florida resident, who had a quick turnaround from her physical three-set victory over 11th-seeded Mirra Andreeva late Sunday to end the 17-year-old Russian’s quest for the Sunshine Double and her third straight Masters 1000 title.
It didn’t seem as if Anisimova had much fuel in the tank as Raducanu broke the recent Doha Masters 1000 champion’s serve five times to roll to a 6-1, 6-3 victory. It marks the Brit’s fourth match win this week, including a marathon victory over the eighth-seeded Emma Navarro, and is the first time she has strung together that many wins since stunning the world with her title run at the 2021 US Open (10 straight wins, including qualifiers without dropping a set].
“The biggest thing I’m proud of is just finding, I guess, the competitive spirit and being there for every ball and drawing that out of myself,’’ said Raducanu, who won all 10 of her serves in the first set. I think that’s kind of been missing in the last few months and even a few years at times.
“I think that’s the biggest win for me is just feeling a lot of hunger, feeling on the court competitive, wanting to run down every ball, and that’s the biggest win I would say from this week.”
Top-seeded Sabalenka, who had only spent 1-hour, 38 minutes in winning her first two matches, was nearly flawless, slamming 24 winners with just 12 errors while winning 76 percent of her first-service points to reach her 26th Masters 1000 quarterfinal and third in Miami. She is now 7-0 against Collins, 31, who won her most prestigious title of her career here last year.
It seems as if Sabalenka made out the draw as her quarterfinal opponent will be 9th-seeded Qinwen Zheng of China, who she’s 5-0 against. Two of her victories came in the quarterfinals of the US Open (2023-24), another in the 2024 WTA Finals final, and also in the 2024 Australian Open final. Zheng won 81 percent of her first-service points en route to a 6-2, 7-6 (3) victory over 40th-ranked Ashlyn Krueger, the 20-year-old from Dallas.
“She’s a tough opponent, and we had a lot of tough and tricky matches in the past,’’ Sabalenka said of Collins. “So, I was very happy to get through this match.”
Sabalenka has lost two heartbreaking finals at the Australian Open and more recently at Indian Wells, so she’s intent on capturing her eighth Masters 1000 but first in Miami where she has a home.
“Australia was very hurtful, a very tough one. Indian Wells, it was just I believe not my day,’’ she said. “We know what happened there, what I was struggling with. I didn’t have that much time to be depressed or anything. I was straight back to practice on the next day. I’m here in Miami, so I already forgot what happened there.”
