Aryna Sabalenka continues to excel on hard courts — Quotes from Miami Open
By Joey Dillon
The IX: Tennis Tuesday with Joey Dillon, April 1, 2025
Howdy, y’all and Happy Tennis Tuesday! With the end of the Miami Open, we’re officially into the beginning of the clay court season. We’ll delve into that next week. First, lets break down how things went down in the 305.
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Aryna Sabalenka captured her eighth career WTA 1000 title with a straight sets win over Jessica Pegula and didn’t drop a set throughout the fortnight. The Belarussian improved to 7-2 overall in her head-to-head against Pegula which also includes wins in both the Cincinnati and U.S. Open finals last year. To me, she’s the best hardcourt player on tour and she now carries over a 3,000 point lead over Iga Swiatek for the No. 1 ranking. With her aggressive style and ability to handle pressure, Sabalenka continues to establish herself as the most dominant force in women’s tennis. Her game is built for big moments, and she’s shown time and again that she’s ready to shine on the sport’s biggest stages.
While she wasn’t able to take the title to the delight of the home crowd, it was another breakthrough for Pegula. She was able to get over a major hump in Miami and powered through to win her semifinal on her third attempt with an epic win over the wildcard Alexandra Eala (who we’ll get to). Her road to the final also included a draining three-set marathon over Emma Raducanu and a final set tiebreaker against Anna Kalinskaya. With a well-rounded and consistent style, Pegula is really starting to inch towards being the tour’s second-best player. Her all-around game has evolved quite a bit the past year and her calm demeanor — especially under pressure — is her biggest strength. If she can manage to stay healthy throughout the clay season, she could potentially break through to a career-high ranking.
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That being said, Pegula reaching the Top 2 is certainly on the racquet of Iga Swiatek. The Pole continues to be without a title since her Roland Garros win. The streak is unfortunately the the longest of her career since she won her first title at Roland Garros in 2020. In perhaps one of the most shocking upsets in recent years, Swiatek looked like a deer in headlights losing to Eala in straight sets when they faced off in the quarterfinals. Not only was she outplayed, the amount of errors — particularly off the forehand wing — was quite alarming.
She also seemed to be quite annoyed at her team, especially coach Wim Fisette, when they were trying to be positive and/or give advice. While the advice Fisette was giving was the right tactic, I do wonder if their partnership will last throughout the claycourt swing. Clay has been the shining force of Swiatek’s career and if she doesn’t win a title in either Stuttgart, Madrid or Rome, I for sure see them splitting. The Swiatek title watch is definitely one of my big question marks of the clay season.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about Alexandra Eala. What a two weeks for the wildcard, who only had one WTA main draw match victory prior to the tournament. Not only did she scalp wins over Grand Slam champions Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys and Swiatek, she also cracked the Top 100 as a result. Though she’s used to it by now, but she’s continuing to break a lot of barriers for Filipino tennis. Now that she will be in the main draws of the bigger tournaments moving forward — with not many points to defend — Eala is certainly one to watch and perhaps already the WTA Newcomer of the Year.
We now head to Charleston and Bogota to kick of the clay campaign. Forever a player and fan favorite, the green clay of Charleston is an easy way to segue from the hardcourt season to the European red clay. The tournament is also becoming the first WTA event to utilize electric line calling technology on the surface. Now THAT will be something to see as there has been ample discussion on whether or not clay courts should use ELC or simply rely on umpire’s rulings. Time will tell!
On to links!
This Week in Women’s Tennis
Diana Shnaider and Mirra Andreeva won the Miami Open doubles title with a win over surprise finalists Cristina Bucsa and Miyu Kato.
There were two WTA 125 events this week and both were won by the No. 1 seeds. At the Puerto Vallarta Open, Jaqueline Cristian defeated Linda Fruhvirtova to take the singles title, with Hanna Chang and Christina McHale winning doubles over Maya Joint and Ena Shibahara. At the Megasaray Hotels Open in Antalya, Turkey, Olga Danilović beat Victoria Jiménez Kasintseva to bring home the singles crown and the duo of Maria Lourdes Carlé and Simona Waltert upset last week’s champions Maja Chwalińska and Anastasia Dețiuc.
Gaby Dabrowski continues to speak out and share the importance of health screenings following the sharing of her breast cancer diagnosis last year.
Jasmine Paolini and coach Renzo Furlan, who made consecutive Grand Slam finals last year, have shared that they have split following a ten-year partnership.
Sometimes the racquet simply does the talking and a gear change spoke plenty for Madison Keys.
Tennis Channel really killed it with some of their content this week:
German player Mina Hodzic has been suspended for three months after being caught working with a coach who has been banned for match-fixing.
As she gears up for her local event, Emma Navarro has longtime coach Peter Ayers continuing to lead her team.
Danielle Collins officially adopted Crash, the dog she rescued that was hit by a car and left on the side of the road in Miami.
Victoria Azarenka will be out with injury following a retirement in Miami, but fortunately, it won’t be for too long.
Tracy Austin and Connie Spooner, the WTA’s first athletic trainer, were honored in Indian Wells at the annual Annalee Thurston luncheon.
Elina Svitolina and husband Gael Monfils, were quite the guests on Tennis Channel’s Second Serve show.
The WTA Foundation has stepped in to help tennis programs significantly impacted by the Southern California wildfires.
Tweet of the Week
Daria Kasatkina, an outspoken critic of her homeland Russia, announced she’s officially defecting and is representing Australia starting this week.
Five at The IX: Miami Open Week 2
Q. It was interesting what you were saying on The Tennis Channel interview about not getting angry at yourself when you lose your serve. Obviously, you would have been angry a lot in that first set with the way it went, that crazy game. But how much did you work on that, on keeping the control? You used to be very visible when you got angry with yourself, and now you keep yourself under control much more. Was that a conscious decision to really work on that?
ARYNA SABALENKA: Well, honestly, I struggled a lot in the past with a lot of different things, so I went through really different challenges, and I was struggling with my serve so much, I couldn’t serve for a while, so I had to play without the serve.
And I think that was the moment when I realized that I actually have other weapons in my game and strengths, and I can actually win the match even if my serve is not working.
Then one day, yeah, I just decided, okay, whatever happens on the court, I’m not going to show my emotions. I went through a lot, and there is much more difficult stuff in life than just tennis match, so I was, like, okay, whatever happens, I’m not going to show any emotions. I’m done with that. I’m not going to be that kid who’s, like, getting frustrated and losing the matches.
So it worked really well, and I think it was just, like, the first year when I won Australian Open. I just realized a lot of things, and since then I’m a different person, a different player. Like, mental part of the game, it was a huge improvement.
Q. You have already kind of touched on this. Can you talk specifically about some of the positive takeaways that you have from the Miami Open, including facing the No. 1 player in the world and some of the great things that you did right today?
JESSICA PEGULA: I mean, I was breaking her. I was putting a lot of pressure on her serve, which is one of her best parts of her game.
I just wasn’t able to hold consistently and kind of secure those breaks, which I feel was the big difference. It was tough on the one side against the wind. We were both really having trouble holding, because if you hit one good return, it just felt like you couldn’t do anything with the ball.
We are obviously both very good returners, but I think she was able to manage her serve a little bit better and get out of some really long games, whereas I felt like in my service games I was just behind.
I thought I returned well, moved well, put myself in good positions to get up on her, you know, hitting the ball clean. I just felt like she just was able to kind of hit the lines when she needed to hit that big serve or one-two punch when she needed to.
That was honestly just the main difference to me today, but as far as the last couple of weeks, I have been, I think, moving really well, I think consistently been serving a lot better, winning a lot more free points on my serve. Except for today, unfortunately (smiling). But I have definitely been serving much better and moving really well.
I think I want to be able to take that going into the clay court season and really just use those things. I know I’m known more for a hard court player, but I think I can do well on the clay too. So hopefully, with some of those intangibles that I have added to my game, that can help me have a good clay season.
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Q. You’re going to become the first tennis star from the Philippines. How much interest is there in the Philippines in tennis at the moment? Do you think you’re going to make a difference?
ALEXANDRA EALA: I would love to think that I make a difference. You know, that’s the only thing I can do to give back to my country is to help inspire, to inspire change and positive change, to inspire people to pick up a racquet, to watch more tennis, watch more women’s tennis.
I think that tennis in the Philippines has so much potential, because even though it’s not as widespread as other sports, I feel that we have a lot of hidden talent, and if we can have the support to back it up and the exposure to back it up, then I think that Philippine tennis can be a big thing.
Q. Sort of along those lines, you’ve mentioned how this week you’re trying to not be 100% fully locked in. I’m curious, how are you maintaining that mentality as you progress in the tournament? How different does it look this week versus how you would normally prepare for a tournament?
EMMA RADUCANU: Yeah, I think before even the first half of the first section of this year I would be so locked in. Every warmup would be an hour long. It would just be not much talking, just so focused. A lot of long tennis sessions, long gym sessions and just long days all the time.
Then I think kind of by the time I played the match, I was quite tired. I think that’s something that we adjusted this week bringing more fun elements into it, shortening certain things in warmups, and just adding things that are outside the box, I guess.
I guess to warm up, for example, like not just running up and down in a straight line, which can be a bit more tedious and just playing a game and playing three different sports before we warm up, getting a good sweat on, laughing. Then you go onto the court feeling a lot more relaxed, and every part of you is just looser.
Yeah, I think it’s worked so far this week. It’s definitely a note to take home for me.
Q. How are you feeling overall with your season so far and your level of play and confidence? Because you looked pretty confident out there.
JASMINE PAOLINI: You know, I think I didn’t play bad this season, but I didn’t have a great result, you know, but I was there. I lost many matches but to big, you know, opponents.
You know, was tough, but at the same time I was repeating to myself that, you know, I’m there. You know, maybe I need just a little bit more of confidence. It came here maybe.
Yeah, of course winning matches helps a lot. You know, I’m happy that I made the semifinal here.
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