Gauff rolls past Kenin; American Krueger stuns seventh seed

By Harvey Fialkov

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — Earlier this week, Coco Gauff told the media that she strives for perfection but knows that she can’t reach it.

Well, on a picturesque Thursday afternoon on Stadium Court at the Miami Open Masters 1000 presented by ITAU, the third-ranked, freshly turned 21-year-old came darn close.

The stunning aspect to Gauff’s 6-0, 6-0 second-round victory was that it came against a fellow Grand Slam champion in Sofia Kenin in a neighborhood battle of sorts. The two had split their previous four meetings, including three competitive encounters in majors.

“I was definitely playing well today, and maybe she wasn’t playing her peak great tennis,’’ understated Gauff, who was born and lives in Delray Beach about 45 minutes away. “I don’t think anyone who is playing their best tennis will have that scoreline today, so I’m not going to sit here and say she played her best tennis.

“I think it was a combination of me playing really well; it was really great tennis from me, and maybe her not playing as well.”

After the opening 23-minute set, Kenin took a long bathroom break, and Gauff was so, “bored,’’ she practiced her serve while waiting. It didn’t pay off as she notched her second and final double-fault of the match on the first point of the second set.

Both possess world-class two-handed backhands, but Gauff was finding lines, while Kenin’s errant strokes needed a GPS to locate. Gauff dominated on serve, winning a remarkable 84 percent of her first-service points compared to just 30 percent for Kenin, who grew up about a lob away from Hard Rock Stadium in Pembroke Pines.

Kenin, 26, whose ranking has slipped from a career-best 4^th after winning the 2020 Australian Open to 46^th, won only 17 percent (2-of-12) of her second serves and just 18 points out of 67.

It was Gauff’s second double-bagel victory of her career, with her only other coming against Aranxta Rus in the 2024 Madrid Masters 1000. The 47-minute match was the quickest of Gauff’s six-year career. Kenin’s only other whitewashing came against three-time Miami Open champion, Victoria Azarenka, in a round-of-32 match in Rome.

After Kenin edged another Grand Slam champion Petra Kvitova in the first round, she said she was really nervous because she wanted to play Gauff in the next round. Be careful what you wish for.

Gauff will next play athletic Greek Maria Sakkari, who won a marathon battle with Italian Lucia Bronzetti, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4.

In an early evening match on Court 1, four-time major champion Naomi Osaka was cheered on by a large contingent of Haitians. Osaka, whose father is Haitian, rode an early break to a 6-2, 6-4 victory over 24^th-seed Russian Liudmila Samsonova. Osaka, a finalist here in 2022, won 90 percent of her first serves an 100 percent of her second serves in the opening set.

After the match, Osaka danced around the court wrapped in a Haitian flag, an signed autographs for nearly a half hour.

Defending champion and 14^th-seed Danielle Collins of St. Petersburg close the evening session at 11:30 p.m, with a 6-4, 7-6 (3) victory over Romanian Sorana Cirstea. Collins won 75.3 percent of  her first serves, and is 3-0 over Cirstea, who she also knocked out of the Miami Open in the round of 16 last year.

Top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka followed on Stadium Court, and her match didn’t last much longer as she cruised to a 6-3, 6-0 victory over 64^th-ranked Bulgarian Viktoriya Tomova in just 58 minutes, to give the fans more time to roam the grounds to play ping-pong at the Stella Artois pavilion or ride on the Piper-Heidsieck gondolas for an aerial view of the outside court action.

There were more bagels handed out on Stadium Court than at a Jewish delicatessen.

Sabalenka is a fan of avenging defeats as she did recently to Madison Keys in the Indian Wells semis after losing to her in the Australian Open final earlier this year. She has set her sights on Russian teen prodigy Mirra Andreeva, who came from behind to beat her in the desert.

However, she didn’t realize that she had lost to her 30-year-old opponent in the 2016 Budapest tournament, 7-6 (4), 6-4 when the Belarusian was just 16.

“I don’t remember. Honestly with the team, we spoke before the match, of course, and we thought like I never faced her before. That’s how bad we are,’’ smiled Sabalenka. “Oh my God, it was so long ago. Well, I’m happy to answer it now with the win and with the revenge, of course.”

With five of the Top 10 seeds in the top half of the draw in action, the lone upset came when a confident Ashlyn Krueger stunned seventh-seeded Elena Rybakina (ranked 8^th), a finalist in Miami the past two years, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 on the Butch Buchholz Family Court.

It was Krueger’s first win over a Top 10 player in seven attempts and continues her momentum from her final berth at the WTA 500 Abu Dhabi Open (UAE) where she lost to new mom Belinda Bencic in three sets. Ironically, Krueger is often referred to as ‘Baby Rybakina,’ for their similar styles featuring a powerful, offensive attack, often ending in short points.

“Just mentally it was a great win for me,’’ said Krueger, 20, a Dallas native now ranked a career-high 40^th. “It means a lot and just shows the work that I’ve been putting in [with coach Michael Joyce] makes it really meaningful and it’s coming together on court.”

It’s back to the drawing board for the 25-year-old Russian-born Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion and 2023 Australian Open finalist, who lost her previous two matches to Andreeva, the 17-year-old who won her first-round doubles match.

Jasmine Paolini, the diminutive, bubbly Italian who enjoyed a breakout season last year when she reached two Grand Slam finals to see her ranking soar from 29^th to four (now 6^th), came back from a double-break down in the first set to defeat Rebecca Sramkova of Slovokia, 6-4, 6-4.

Paolini will play another crowd pleaser, Ons Jabeur, Tunesia’s pioneering great, who perhaps helped by practicing with three-time Miami Open champion, the legendary Venus Williams on Wednesday, downed two-time Grand Slam doubles champion Czech qualifier Katerina Siniakova 6-4, 7-6 (7) on her fourth match point.

Siniakova’s doubles partner and American qualifier Taylor Townsend pulled out a 7-6 (2), 1-6, 6-1 victory over 19^th-seed Yulia Putintseva.

Ninth-seeded Qinwen Zheng of China defeated Lauren Davis, a Boca Raton transplant from Cleveland, 6-1, 7-5. Zheng, who lives in Spain, won the Gold medal at the Paris Olympics last year and also reached the finals of the Australian Open where she fell to Sabalenka in straight sets.