Four takeaways from Azarenka's 7-5, 6-3 win over Pliskova in Miami

Three-time Miami Open champion Victoria Azarenka got one step closer to a fourth title at the Premier Mandatory event on Tuesday night with a 7-5, 6-3 quarterfinal victory over Karolina Pliskova.

Here are four takeaways from the Belarusian’s straight-set win over the big-serving Czech:

Neither player was safe on their serve in the match. More than half of the games in the match—11 of 21 to be exact—were breaks of serve. At the end of the day, Azarenka was just a little bit stronger on serve, holding six of her 10 service games while Pliskova held just four of her 11 service games.

Azarenka also had much tidier numbers overall in the match with a +2 winners-to-unforced errors differential (18 to 16). Meanwhile, Pliskova finished the match with a -15 differential (20 to 35).

Azarenka nearly let a big lead go in the first set, but she regrouped. The two-time Australian Open champion stormed out to a 5-2, double-break lead in the first set, only to lose both breaks—and the next three games—for the first set to get back to 5-all. But she found her range again just in time, reeling off the next three games to go up a set and a break, and she was mostly in control from there.

“I felt like I had a very good lead and then let it go a little bit,” Azarenka said in her on-court interview.

“She really stepped it up, so I had to fight back.”

Match point from Azarenka's victory over Pliskova at the Miami Open:

This was Azarenka’s best win in almost exactly two years. Azarenka’s win over the No. 6-ranked Pliskova is her first Top 10 win since beating a No. 3-ranked Angelique Kerber in the semifinals of this very tournament two years ago. It’s Azarenka’s 64th career Top 10 win and her first as a mom.

The former World No. 1 is now projected to return to the Top 100. By reaching the semifinals, Azarenka is projected to rise from her current ranking of No. 186 back into the Top 100. It’ll be her first time back in the Top 100 since the two weeks of last year’s Miami Open—on April 3 of last year, her points from the 2016 title here dropped off and she fell from No. 48 to No. 317 in the WTA rankings.

Azarenka is now through to the Miami Open semifinals for the fourth time in her career, and every time she’s gotten to the semifinal stage—2009, 2011 and 2016—she’s gone on to win the title.

Standing between Azarenka and a spot in the 2018 final will be Sloane Stephens, who beat Kerber in the afternoon quarterfinal, 6-1, 6-2. Azarenka is 3-1 head-to-head against Stephens, but in their only meeting in the last three years—just a few weeks ago in the second round of Indian Wells—it was Stephens who came out the winner, closing the Belarusian out after a tight second set, 6-1, 7-5.

“I need to play better for sure than I played last time!” Azarenka commented. “I have to keep my unforced errors down—last time I did quite a few of those—but she’s such a terrific player, she’s been playing amazing, especially last year what she’s done at the US Open is pretty remarkable.”

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