Carlos Alcaraz ended the 10-match tournament winning streak of defending champion Hubert Hurkacz to advance to the final at the Miami Open presented by Itau on Friday evening. With his 7-6(5), 7-6(2) victory, the Spaniard has reached the biggest final of his young career, going one better than his semi-final run at Indian Wells two weeks ago.
“I have a lot of emotions right now. It’s something that you dream of when you are a child,” Alcaraz reflected. “It’s really good to be in the final here in Miami. I love playing here. The crowd is amazing. I’m going to approach the final like a first round, trying to mask the nerves. I’m going to enjoy it, it’s going to be a great final.”
Alcaraz trailed 3/5 in the opening-set tie-break, but repeated his heroics from Thursday’s quarter-final win against Miomir Kecmanovic by winning four straight points to close it out.
After saving two break points at 5-all in the second set, Alcaraz controlled the second tie-break with help from some untimely Hurkacz errors. A drop shot at 5/2 set up match point, and a dipping pass attempt forced a volley error to close out the match.
“I couldn’t return his serves, but I knew that the match was going to be long sets like it was, 7-6, 7-6,” said Alcaraz, who dropped deep with his return positioning, in contrast to his previous matches. “At the beginning, I saw that I couldn’t return, I thought we were going to play a lot of tie-breaks… A little bit different [than my previous matches] with his serve, but it’s a great win for me.”
Hurkacz tallied one more winner than Alcaraz on the night, 23 to 22, but gave up that advantage by committing 37 unforced errors in the match. But this was far from a standard matchup of baseline blasts as both men attacked the net with regularity, a total of 47 times between them, with both posting a 70 per cent win rate. Alcaraz also hit 16 drop shots in the match, winning 11 of those points (69 per cent).
By reaching the final, Alcaraz moves up to third place in the ATP Race to Turin, with an opportunity to move up to second with one more win.
Casper Ruud, another first-time ATP Masters 1000 finalist, awaits in Sunday’s final following his 6-4, 6-1 win over Francisco Cerundolo. Alcaraz is bidding to become the third-youngest man to win a title at this level, behind only Michael Chang (1990, Toronto) and Rafael Nadal (2005, Monte Carlo).
Source Tennis – ATP World Tour
