American Sloane Stephens kept intact her streak of never having lost a final as she defeated Latvia\u2019s Jelena Ostapenko 7-6(5), 6-1 to claim the Miami Open tennis title on Saturday.<\/p>\n
After a tense first set, the U.S. Open champion reeled off six consecutive games in the second to beat the French Open winner and claim her first Miami title after a slow start to the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting a title here or anywhere, really. I just wanted to make sure I got my game back where I wanted it to be,\u201d Florida native Stephens said in a courtside interview after extending her record in finals to 6-0.<\/p>\n
The crowd favourite had just six winners, compared with 25 for Ostapenko, but 48 unforced errors by the Latvian and Stephens\u2019 relentless defence were the difference.<\/p>\n
Adding to her triumphant weekend, Stephens, who was seeded only 13th in Miami, will make her world top-10 debut on Monday, after rising to number nine.<\/p>\n
Ostapenko is currently ranked fifth.<\/p>\n
Their error-strewn first set began with four consecutive service breaks and went to 6-6 before Stephens pushed ahead 6-2 in the tiebreak.<\/p>\n
Ostapenko saved four set points but couldn\u2019t halt Stephens as the Latvian lost her first tiebreak – and first set – of the tournament when Stephens\u2019 return pulled Ostapenko wide to the backhand and the Latvian netted.<\/p>\n
Ostapenko grabbed the first break in the second set, but Stephens broke straight back and cruised to victory in an hour and 31 minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a little nervous and it was showing in my game,\u201d Stephens said of the first set. \u201cMy feet weren\u2019t moving. I wasn\u2019t swinging good at the ball.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just needed a little reminder to go for my shots, go for my forehand and really go for it if I wanted to take the title.\u201d<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s prize will be decided on Sunday with American John Isner going for the biggest win of his career against Germany\u2019s Alexander Zverev.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American Sloane Stephens kept intact her streak of never having lost a final as she defeated Latvia\u2019s Jelena Ostapenko 7-6(5), 6-1 to claim the Miami Open tennis title on Saturday. After a tense first set, the U.S. Open champion reeled off six consecutive games in the second to beat the French Open winner and claim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26609,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26607\/revisions\/26609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}