Kvitova wins a marathon tiebreak, then her first Miami Open at 33—the second oldest ever

After 65 minutes of play and more than 22 of a tiebreak, Petra Kvitova held up her right fist and shouted into the Miami Open crowd.

It was a subdued celebration at the end of a marathon opening set of the women’s championship because there was much more to go, but it was the pivot point in the match. She could sense it and so could the crowd inside Hard Rock Stadium, which rose to its feet for a standing ovation after the 33-year-old Czech landed the first—and, ultimately, decisive—blow of her 7-6, 6-2 upset of Elena Rybakina.

“To be honest, I have no idea how I did it,” Kvitova told Tennis Channel. “You should’ve seen the balls at the end of the tiebreak. They were like big, fluffy balls.”

Less than 40 minutes later, the match was over and Kvitova, the No. 15 seed in Miami Gardens, had her biggest win since 2018. She put her hands on her head, smiled and exhaled. It was the 30th title of her career — she’s one of only 19 women with so many — and made her the second oldest woman to ever win at Miami, behind only Serena Williams.

Kvitova, who won a pair of Grand Slam titles at the Wimbledon Championships in 2011 and 2014, hadn’t won a WTA 1000 tournament since the 2018 Mutua Madrid Open and had only even been to the finals of one such tournament since 2020. With this one, she stopped Rybakina, the No. 10 seed, from becoming only the fifth woman ever to complete the Sunshine Double — back-to-back wins at the Indian Wells Masters and Miami Open — and is set to return to the top 10 of the Women’s Tennis Association rankings for the first time since 2021.

“It means a lot for me that even at my age I can still win a big tournament,” Kvitova said.

She got to the final of the Miami Open for the first time without beating a single top-15 player, but capped it with an impressive win on the stadium court against the No. 7 player in the world, outlasting the 23-year-old Kazakh in an endurance-testing first set and plowing through her in a dominant second.

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The first set started in standard fashion. Kvitova and Rybakina traded games, each winning on her first four service opportunities before Kvitova finally broke Rybakina to go up 5-4, only to give away the advantage when Rybakina broke back. It set up a decisive tiebreak and it went so long it accounted for more than a third of the first set.

The tiebreak unfolded similarly. Kvitova and Rybakina mostly held serve, and one almost always answered when the other got a break. Rybakina blew five set points and Kvitova four until she finally got Rybakina to hit into the net at the end of a rally to win 16-14.

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As the crowd roared, Kvitova caught her breath and got ready to finish off Rybakina in just 1:40. For all intents and purposes, the match was decided by the end of the second game of the second set. Kvitova hammered out a quick win to hold serve and go up 1-0 in the first game, then fired away in the second to go up 40-0, break Rybakina and get her early lead to 2-0. Rybakina never recovered.

“Experience today played a good role in my mind, to be honest,” Kvitova said.

She joked her goals for the season are now complete. When the year started, Kvitova wanted to just win one tournament at some point in 2023.

The year is barely more than three months old and already she has one.

“I have no idea what this will do in the season. I’m just happy that I won it from nothing, I would say,” Kvitova said. “I just take it very positively that I can still compete with the best.”

Gonzalez, Roger-Vasselin win doubles

Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Santiago Gonzalez — 39 and 40, respectively — make up one of the oldest doubles teams on the ATP Tour, and they got their biggest win yet as a tandem Saturday at the Miami Open.

Like Kvitova, they won a tiebreak in the first set, then took control in the second to get a 7-6, 7-5 win against Austin Krajicek and Nicholas Mahut inside the stadium.

Roger-Vasselin, from France, got his second ATP Tour Masters 1000 title, and Gonzalez got his first, also becoming the first Mexican to reach a final at Miami.