Miami Open 2023 (women's singles)

Anyone who had to pick the title favorite ahead of the women's tournament at the 2023 Miami Open faced a tough task. Nearly the entire world's elite , with the exception of world number one Iga Swiatek, was in the field. Swiatek had to sit out the tournament due to injury, but otherwise, the entire top ten of the WTA rankings was present in Miami.

This meant that Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka, both in excellent form, could be considered favorites, and other top players like Coco Gauff (WTA-6) and Ons Jabeur (WTA-5) will also have this tournament marked on their calendars. Former finalists Bianca Andreescu, Jelena Ostapenko, and Sloane Stephens were also on the list of participants, and three-time champion Viktoria Azarenka was also competing in Miami. The Belarusian won the tournament in 2009, 2011, and 2016.

Highlights Miami Open 2023

The first round offered few surprises. This was, of course, due to the fact that most of the seeded players had already received a bye and thus advanced to round two, which proved to be a battlefield for the higher-seeded players. For example, Belgian Elise Mertens managed to defeat the eighth-seeded Daria Kasatkina, and Andreescu proved to be a banana peel for seventh-seeded Maria Sakkari. Ons Jabeur and Caroline Garcia were also eliminated in the second round by Varvara Gracheva and Sorana Cirstea, respectively. Jabeur managed to win only four games in this encounter, while Garcia won five.

The third round of the 2023 Miami Open also saw the loss of several contenders for the title. Gauff, for example, was defeated by Anastasia Potapova, and Liudmila Samsonova failed to defeat Qinwen Zheng. Three-time champion Azarenka also lost her tournament in the third round to Magda Linette. Aside from Martina Trevisan's victory over Ostapenko, the round of 16 saw few major upsets. Consequently, Trevisan took only big names into the quarterfinals, including Rybakina, Pegula, Potapova, Ekatarina Alecandrova, Petra Kvitova, Círstea, and Sabalenka.

Cirstea pulls off a stunt against Sabalenka

While Trevisan had earlier in the tournament achieved impressive results with victories over Claire Liu and Ostapenko, the Italian was crushed in the quarterfinals by Rybakina, 6-3/6-0. Kvitova and Pegula also won their matches against Alexandrova and Potapova, respectively, and the biggest upset came when Cirstea defeated Belarusian Sabalenka. Sabalenka, who had recently been winning one match after another, was eliminated by the Romanian 6-4/6-4 in straight sets.

It led to a semifinal in which Cirstea faced the experienced Kvitova, who had previously never made it past the last eight in Miami, thus achieving her best performance ever at this tournament. However, it quickly became clear that a semifinal spot wasn't enough for the Czech, and with a 7-5/6-4 victory, she secured a place in the final. The other semifinal was between Kazakh Rybakina and American Pegula, who defeated the former with a 7-6/6-4 score, thus preparing herself for another exciting final after Indian Wells , this time against Kvitova.

Miami Open 2023 Final

A fine winning streak for Rybakina, who also won the previous final in Indian Wells. Her opponent's last title was in June 2022, when Kvitova won the WTA title on the grass in Eastbourne. The first set of this final was particularly thrilling, with the women literally and figuratively pushing each other to the limit. A tiebreak was needed to decide who would win the first set, and after a whopping thirty (!) points – the final score was 16-14 – Kvitova finally took the first set. Rybakina couldn't recover from this blow, meaning the Czech also took the second set – much faster: 6-2. With that, she secured the overall victory and secured her first WTA title of 2023.