By Richard Pagliaro | @TennisNow | Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Photograph credit score: Miami Open/Exhausting Rock Stadium
The Miami Open is laying out a wild card welcome mat for 2 in style former champions.
The 2023 event champion Petra Kvitova and 2018 champion and Floridian Sloane Stephens lead the record of 2025 Miami Open ladies’s primary draw wild playing cards, the event introduced right this moment.
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The Miami Open introduced by Itaú is ready for March 16-30 on the iconic Exhausting Rock Stadium.
The 2-time Wimbledon winner Kvitova and the 2017 US Open champion Stephens are joined by Ajla Tomljanovic, Tyra Grant, Alexandra Eala, Victoria Mboko and Sayaka Ishii in receiving wild playing cards to affix the ladies’s subject.
On the boys’s facet, 19-year-old lefty Learner Tien, who has two wins this season in opposition to High 5 opponents, is joined by Christopher Eubanks, Eliot Spizzirri, Federico Cina and Wu Yibing.
Qualifier Tien shocked former world No. 1 Daniil Medvedev on the Australian Open in January then backed up that momentous win sweeping world No. 2 Alexander Zverev in Acapulco final week.
The Miami Open can be Kvitova’s third event since giving start to a son, Petr, seven months in the past. Kvitova owns 31 titles in her profession and can be making her 14th look in Miami.
In her thirteenth Miami look, a then 33-year-old Kvitova fended off Wimbledon winner Elena Rybakina 7-6(14), 6-2, within the 2023 closing to change into the second-oldest ladies’s champion in event historical past after Serena Williams, who was 33 when she lifted the title trophy in 2015.
thirtieth profession singles title 🏆
1st Miami Open title 🌴@Petra_Kvitova snaps Rybakina’s win streak, 7-6(14), 6-2!#MiamiOpen pic.twitter.com/A5cZ5FUCmm
— wta (@WTA) April 1, 2023
“I feel that is one of the best feeling what you’ll be able to have, successful a closing as I did right this moment,” Kvitova mentioned. “That is I like essentially the most, the successful feeling of it.”
The 33-year-old Kvitova joined Serena Williams and Chrissie Evert as the one ladies to contest the Miami closing after celebrating her thirty third birthday. Amongst energetic ladies, solely Venus Williams (49), who just lately declined an Indian Wells wild card however has not but formally retired, owns extra event titles than Kvitova, who raised her finals document to 30-11.
The remaining WTA wild playing cards have been awarded to youngsters.
Eala, a 19-year-old native of the Philippines, was the 2022 US Open junior winner and beforehand gained a pair of doubles titles at junior Grand Slam occasions.
Mboko, 18, is a Canadian who has already claimed seven skilled titles after reaching as excessive as No. 6 as a junior.
Grant, an American who turns 17 subsequent week, has been ranked as excessive because the No. 2 junior on this planet and has gained three junior doubles titles at Grand Slam occasions.
Lastly, Ishii, a Japanese 19-year-old, beforehand held at No. 5 within the junior rankings.
Tien has reached the quarterfinals in two of his final 5 Tour occasions together with a run to the Spherical of 16 on the Australian Open. A two-time US 18s exhausting court docket champion, he gained seven skilled titles in the course of the 2024 season.
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