Miami Open Women's Preview: Bianca Andreescu, and everyone ...

First Quarter

Is it fair to say that Iga Swiatek could use a good week to get back on track? She did make the semifinals in Indian Wells, an outstanding result for most. But once there, she gave a puzzlingly perfunctory performance in her 6-2, 6-2 semifinal loss to Elena Rybakina. That was the fourth time she had gone down to straight-set defeat this season, which is something you don’t expect to see from a player who was as day-to-day dominant as she was in 2022, and who swept Indian Wells and Miami.

Swiatek said she felt some “discomfort” in her rib in her defeat on Friday, so we’ll see if that’s a factor in Miami. She’ll start against either Claire Liu or Katerina Siniakova, and the first seed she could face is Martina Trevisan.

But there’s another name to watch in the other half of this section: Rybakina. The Indian Wells champion is playing Top 3 tennis at the moment, but, because her Wimbledon champion ranking points don’t count, she’s seeded just 10th. Rybakina has proven she can win a Slam; she’s proven she can win a WTA 1000; but do we think she can pull off the Sunshine Double? That’s kind of next level. But even if Rybakina has been erratic as a player in the past, she seems emotionally even-keel enough to put her head down and give it a shot.

First-round match to watch: Elise Mertens vs. Alycia Parks. Hopefully Parks, an American up-and-comer and already a champion in Lyon, can improve on her performance in Indian Wells, where she lost 6-1, 6-1 in the first round to Anna Kalinskaya.

Semifinalist: Rybakina