Jiri Lehecka produced one of the cleanest performances of his career Friday at Hard Rock Stadium, beating Arthur Fils 6-2, 6-2 to reach his first ATP Masters 1000 final. The 24-year-old No. 21 seed did not lose a service game the entire week, becoming the first player to reach an ATP Masters 1000 title match without being broken since Novak Djokovic at the 2018 Shanghai Rolex Masters.

For the second consecutive year, a Czech man will play for the Miami Open title. Lehecka controlled the match from the first service game after Fils, who had reached his maiden 1000-level semifinal without dropping serve and who saved four match points in his quarterfinal with Tommy Paul, chose to serve first.

Lehecka’s returning stood out. He produced a 9.6 return quality rating while building a two-break lead in the opening set. He converted his pressure into tangible momentum early and carried that into the second set, breaking for 2-1 with a backhand return up the line that Fils could not counter. The frustrated Frenchman tossed his racquet and vented at his team after that exchange.

Lehecka consolidated a key hold from 15-30 to make it more difficult for Fils to mount a comeback. Up 4-2, Lehecka broke again in a 16-point game to seize full control of the match and then closed the contest on his next opportunity. He won 59 of the 100 rallies that lasted fewer than nine shots, an indicator of how effectively he dictated baseline exchanges.

When asked on court, he reacted, “Final feels!!!” The victory sends Lehecka into the biggest final of his career and keeps intact the rare accomplishment of reaching a Masters 1000 title match without surrendering serve.

The Miami Open final pairs Coco Gauff against Aryna Sabalenka in a match defined by physicality and pressure. Their head-to-head is 6-6, and this will be their first meeting in Miami, where Gauff is contesting her first final at what is essentially her hometown tournament.

Both players accept the grind this rivalry produces. “We’ve played so many matches, and it’s physical when I play her every time,” Gauff says. “It’s going to be tough.” “With Coco, you know that you have to play an extra ball, and the ball always comes back,” Sabalenka says. “Sometimes not perfect, but it’s always back on your side, and you have to be aggressive, you have to go for shots.”

“She pushes you into the long rallies, and I think that’s what makes her difficult.” Gauff has previously exploited that pattern to test Sabalenka mentally. In two Grand Slam finals — the US Open in 2023 and Roland Garros in 2025 — Sabalenka lost control of her emotions and her shots against Gauff, turning apparent victories into defeats.

Gauff’s run in Miami was far from straightforward. She needed three sets in each of her first four matches and had to overcome an uneven serve and an erratic forehand. Her quarterfinal win over Belinda Bencic felt decisive, and she followed with a clinical 6-1, 6-1 semifinal against Karolina Muchova. “Today I didn’t feel like an imposter,” Gauff said, in what qualifies as high self-praise coming from her. “I feel like I played some good tennis today.”

Sabalenka arrives in formidable form. She is 22-1 on the year, has won 22 of the 23 sets she played across Indian Wells and Miami, and she beat No. 2 Elena Rybakina 6-4, 6-3 in the semis as she bids for her first Sunshine Double. “I think I played really incredible tennis,” Sabalenka said after that match. “Nothing I could do better today.”

Their most recent meeting was Sabalenka’s indoor hard-court win in Riyadh last November. Saturday’s final offers a straightforward contrast: one player seeking to impose power early, the other looking to prolong rallies and test patience. Which approach prevails will decide the title.

Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina will meet in the Miami Open semifinals, producing a rare Top 2 matchup before a final. The encounter looks unusual because the pair currently occupy the No. 1 and No. 2 spots on the WTA rankings, yet they collide in a semifinal rather than the title match.

The reason is procedural. The Miami draw and seedings were set before the rankings were updated following Indian Wells. At the moment the seeds were determined, Rybakina was ranked No. 3 and therefore received the No. 3 seed in Miami. She moved up to No. 2 on the WTA rankings after that update. In standard draws the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds are placed randomly into either the top or bottom half. By chance, the No. 1 seed Sabalenka ended up in the same half as the No. 3 seed Rybakina, which after the rankings change creates a semifinal meeting of the current No. 1 and No. 2.

Such a sequence is uncommon. According to the WTA media guide, this will be only the 10th time on record since WTA rankings began in 1975 that the No. 1 and No. 2 players on the rankings have faced each other before a final. That tally covers just over 50 years of rankings history.

The circumstances that produce early Top 2 meetings vary. The first recorded instance occurred in Palm Springs in 1977 and was driven by a round-robin format. More recently, the last four occurrences took place at the WTA Finals in 2010, 2012, 2019 and 2023, where a partial round-robin setup pairs a first-place finisher from one group with a second-place finisher from the other in the semifinals.

Another notable example came at Roland Garros in 1996. Steffi Graf and Monica Seles were co-ranked No. 1 as Seles resumed her comeback, while Conchita Martinez, ranked No. 2, was seeded No. 3 and fell into Graf’s half, producing a semifinal between the co-No. 1s and No. 2.