Indian Wells champions Carlos Alcaraz and Elena Rybakina stayed on course to complete the ‘Sunshine Double’ with straight sets wins at the Miami Open on Tuesday.
Spain’s world number one Alcaraz deployed his dynamic game to tame Tommy Paul 6–4 6–4 and set up a quarterfinal with another American Taylor Fritz, who eased past Denmark’s Holger Rune 6–3 6–4 earlier in the day.
Alcaraz showcased his sensational speed and reflexes to reach a drop shot for love-30 and broke Paul two points later for a 3–2 advantage.
An acrobatic overhead winner gave Paul a break point at 5–4 but Alcaraz recovered, unleashing a perfectly disguised drop shot of his own that Paul could not chase down to claim the first set.
Paul fell behind an early break again in the second set on a missed forehand for 2–1.
Paul, who came from behind to beat Alcaraz in their only previous meeting at last year’s Rogers Cup, then fended off a match point while serving at 5–3.
But there would be no escape from Alcaraz, the top-seeded teenager letting out a mighty roar when Paul’s forehand landed out of bounds to end the contest.
“The key of that match was that I was playing to attack,” Alcaraz said. “I didn’t let him play his game— attack and go to the net—I did those things first ... I played a really complete match.”
Cool Fritz
A cool, confident Fritz earlier booked his ticket to a fifth straight quarter-final by beating fellow top 10 player Rune.The American ninth seed pumped his racket in a subdued celebration after an unreturnable serve wrapped up victory over the seventh-seeded Rune, who failed to convert five of his six break-point chances.
Fritz is on the hunt for a second Masters 1000 title after winning Indian Wells last year and pounced on a break point chance in the penultimate game of the opening set in front of a home crowd squarely on his side at Hard Rock Stadium.
He made good use of that momentum and broke Rune in the opening game of the second set, where he upped his level, producing only three unforced errors and winning 12 of his 15 first-serve points.
Rune, who was knocked out early at Indian Wells this month, was unable to set up a single break point chance in the second set and produced nine unforced errors.
“It helps when I can grab early breaks in the sets and just play solid tennis,” said Fritz. “Serve well and hold onto the breaks - that always makes the match a lot easier.”
At the Grandstand, Italian 10th seed Jannik Sinner breezed past sixth-seeded Andrey Rublev, firing off more than two dozen winners with very few mistakes to win 6–2 6–4.
Rybakina Advances
On the women’s side, Rybakina enjoyed a businesslike 6–3 6–0 win to dispatch 25th seed Martina Trevisan to move two wins away from completing the ‘Sunshine Double.’The 10th-seeded Kazakh deployed her clean groundstrokes and feasted on the Italian’s soft second serve in the tight first set.
But it was all Rybakina in the second, the powerful and precise Wimbledon champion pounding an unreturnable serve on match point to notch her 12th consecutive win.
“I would say that, of course, maybe I’m moving not as good as I was moving in Indian Wells but overall I think that I’m trying to keep that level from Indian Wells,” she told reporters after reaching the semifinals.
“There are a lot of ups-and-downs, but I think overall it’s not bad.”
