Jessica Pegula ended the streak of upsets at the Miami Open by defeating Britain’s unseeded Emma Raducanu on Wednesday night.
The fourth-seeded Pegula won 6-4, 6-7 (3), 6-2 in a match that lasted two hours and 25 minutes. With the win, Pegula advanced to her third Miami Open women’s semifinal in four years. She will play teenage wild card Alexandra Eala from the Philippines on Thursday.
Pegula’s match finished at 11:23 p.m., which led to the postponement of the men’s quarterfinal between Novak Djokovic and Sebastian Korda until Thursday.
Raducanu, who won the 2021 U.S. Open, came into the match ranked 60th after dealing with multiple coaching changes and injuries.
Pegula took the first set, but Raducanu showed her power in winning the second set. However, she seemed to struggle physically in the Miami heat, which reached 70% humidity. Raducanu grimaced during points and showed signs of overheating, having five set points on Pegula’s serve but failing to convert. Pegula then held her serve to lead 5-4.
At that point, medical staff took Raducanu’s blood pressure and pulse. The chair umpire called for a medical timeout, and medical officials applied ice bags to Raducanu’s legs and placed cold towels around her neck.
After the break, Raducanu played well and won the tiebreaker 7-3.
In the third set, Pegula bounced back, breaking Raducanu early at 2-0. On her third break point, Pegula finished the match by breaking Raducanu at love.
In a nearly three-hour men’s quarterfinal, Grigor Dimitrov, seeded 14th, battled through cramps and the heavy humidity to defeat Francisco Cerundolo, who is seeded 23rd, 6-7 (6), 6-4, 7-6 (3).
Dimitrov had to be helped off the court by a tournament doctor and ATP physio after sitting in his chair for more than 25 minutes, feeling dizzy.
Dimitrov, a Miami Open finalist in 2024, saved a match point while trailing 5-6 in the third set, eventually forcing a tiebreaker. He had lost the first set’s tiebreaker 6-4 after wasting seven set points.
Dimitrov will face the winner of the Djokovic-Korda match in the semifinals.
Earlier on Wednesday, several top seeds fell.
Unseeded wild card Alexandra Eala stunned No. 2 seed Iga Swiatek in a straight-set women’s quarterfinal. In the men’s tournament, top seed Alexander Zverev was defeated by No. 17 seed Arthur Fils of France, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, in a fourth-round match that had been delayed by rain.
Fils, who beat American Frances Tiafoe in a long three-set match, will play Jakub Mensik in the quarterfinals on Thursday.
In the third set, Fils broke Zverev at 3-3 and kept the German moving. Fils won the match with a powerful shot down the left sideline that Zverev couldn’t reach.
Fils, 20, received treatment on his back after the first set but came back strong, winning the next two sets in two hours. “I was feeling not great in the rallies,” he said. “I’ve had a little problem in my back since I was young, so sometimes it hurts me a little bit. I had to find a rhythm, be more aggressive, and come into the court to play my game and not let him play. Because when you let him play, he is one of the best tennis players in the world. I’m really happy about the way I did it.”
Eala, ranked 140th, is on the verge of becoming the first major tennis star from the Philippines after her win against Swiatek 6-2, 7-5.
Eala became the third wild card to reach the Miami Open semifinals, following Justine Henin in 2010 and Victoria Azarenka in 2018.
She stayed calm throughout the match, with the first four games going to at least one deuce, and five of the first six games having service breaks. Swiatek only held serve twice in the match and committed 32 unforced errors in the one hour, 39-minute contest.
Eala has now beaten three major winners during her incredible run: Jelena Ostapenko, Madison Keys, and Swiatek, a five-time Grand Slam champion from Poland.
“There is a lot of emotions, definitely,” said Eala, who had never beaten a top 40 player before. “Happiness has to be on the top of the whole list.”
