Top seed and world number 1 Serena Williams only just managed to squeak past 13th seed Dominika Cibulkova on Monday at the Miami Open. The diminutive five foot three inch tall Slovak really had her game going at the beginning of this match as she raced to a 6-2 4-1 lead, helped by Serena’s eighteen unforced errors and a serve that was just not working, but the American, with the spectators behind her, drew on all her famed reserves and pulled level and then went on to take the second set 6-4. Her momentum continued into the decider, which she won 6-2, for the win which took two minutes short of two hours. Her opponent in the semis will be Na Li.
The Chinese 5th seed, Li, played against the Spanish wildcard Garbine Muguruza who has had a great run at this tournament, having taken out Caroline Wozniacki in the previous round. Le seemed to be cruising to an easy win when she led 5-1 in the first set, but Muguruza made a spectacular comeback in winning five games in a row lead 6-5. Li held to force a breaker and went 6-1 up, but again the Spaniard came back to level at 6-6 before Li closed it out at 8-6. Muguruza did not have anything left in the second set, which Li took 6-2.
4th seed and defending champion Agnieszka Radwanska surprisingly dropped a set in her 3rd round match and she did it again on Monday against the young American, Sloane Stephens, the 16th seed. Stephens took the first set 6-4 but the Pole upped her game to win nine games in a row to take the next two sets 6-2 and 6-0. Next up for the Pole is Kirsten Flipkens.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.