Miami has a new queen: Aryna Sabalenka
For the first time in her career, Aryna Sabalenka wins the women’s tournament in Miami, WTA 1000 that is played in parallel with the men’s tournament and the doubles draw: the Belarusian tennis player defeated Jessica Pegula, an American athlete but not too much at home (being originally from Buffalo) 7-5, 6-2 in one hour and twenty-nine minutes of play in the final.
The first set lives of tears, on one side and the other: Sabalenka goes ahead 2-0, Pegula makes a comeback taking it to 3-2 but the counter-response of the finalist in Indian Wells (defeated on that occasion by Mirra Andreeva) is served and at 5-3, with the chance to serve for the set, everything seems already decided. Pegula, on the other hand, regained the upper hand, but only until 6-5 because Sabalenka made her own without leaving any points to her opponent in the game worth 7-5.
Much more linear was the trend in the second set, although Sabalenka got off to a bad start, going down by a break: from there on, however, the world number 1 went wild and made six games out of the next seven her own, leaving only crumbs to her opponent of the day and thus winning her second tournament in the season, after the one in Brisbane in January.
This is not the first time ever that Aryna Sabalenka has partied in Miami: in 2019, in fact, she triumphed in doubles paired with Belgium’s Elise Mertens, defeating Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani in the final with a final score of two sets to none, 7-6(5), 6-2. At the singles level, however, it is Saturday’s her first laurel in the important tournament held in Miami Gardens, in the Miami metropolitan area.
