Petra Kvitová advanced to the semifinals of the tournament in Miami for the first time in her career in her 13th appearance. The 33-year-old Czech tennis player defeated Yekaterina Alexandrova of Russia in today’s postponed quarter-finals after a fight 6:4, 3:6, 6:3, and in the fight for the final she will face Romanian Sorana Cirsteaová on Friday.
Kvitova was playing the quarterfinals at one of the biggest tournaments outside of the Grand Slams for the fourth time, and she fulfilled the role of a slight ranking favorite against Alexandrova. The tennis players had to wait a day for the duel: originally they were supposed to play on Wednesday, but they didn’t get to the court because of the rain.
All the sets of the match between the tennis players, which are decorated with hard serves and strikes from the basic part, were always decided by one break. In the deciding set, the two-time Wimbledon champion Kvitová averted a break point from her opponent at 3:3, but on the contrary, she took advantage of the chance in the next game and took a 5:3 lead. She threw away the first of two match points with her sixth double fault, and after Alexandrova’s backhand hit into the net in the following exchange, she could already shout with joy at the advancement.
While Kvitová played with Alexandrová, who is five years younger, only for the second time and again victoriously, she has a much richer past with her peer Cirstea. They have already met ten times and the Czech tennis player is leading 6:4. In Miami, Cirstea knocked out two Czechs in a row, Karolína Muchová and Markéta Vondroušová, and in the quarterfinals she unexpectedly stopped the world number two Arina Sabalenkova from Belarus.
Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev is also in the semifinals in Miami for the first time. While in the last two years of the Florida tournament he was always eliminated in the quarterfinals, this time he did not hesitate in the fight for advancement among the top four players and in a match interrupted for about half an hour by rain, he defeated the native Christopher Eubanks 6:3, 7:5.
The 27-year-old former world number one Medvedev won 22 of his last 23 matches. With a personal best in Miami, he followed up on the previous elite tournament in Indian Wells, where he advanced to the final for the first time, but lost to world number one Carlos Alcaraz from Spain.
Medvedev has lost just three matches out of twenty-seven this year and is aiming for a fourth title after successes in Rotterdam, Doha and Dubai. He has not yet lost a set in Miami and the next opponent of the tournament four will be his compatriot Karen Chačanov, who won 6:3, 6:2 over Francisco Cerúndol from Argentina.
Miami Men’s and Women’s Tennis Tournament (Hard Court):
Women ($8.8 million endowment), singles – quarterfinals: Kvitova (15-CR) – Alexandrova (18-Russia) 6:4, 3:6, 6:3.
