Alex Eala had to dig deep to win her opening match at the 2026 Miami Open following a marathon victory over Germany's Laura Siegemund.
Eala eventually prevailed 6-7, 6-3, 6-3 on Thursday against the 53rd-ranked Siegemund in a match that lasted three hours and 20 minutes and occasionally became bad tempered.
Eala, 20, lost a tight opening set on a tiebreak after having led 3-0 and blowing four set points.
But she broke her 38-year-old German opponent twice in both the second and third sets as she battled her way to the finish line.
Both players complained to the umpire in a tetchy affair. When Eala was serving at 2-1 in the second set, Siegemund went walkabout after the Filipina player messed up her ball toss. Eala protested against Siegemund “delaying” between points, while the German also grumbled to the officials.
Eala climbed to a new career-high ranking of world No 29 after reaching the last 16 in Indian Wells. Miami is a happy hunting ground for Eala, who reached the semi-final in 2025, beating Iga Swiatek in the last eight.
Elsewhere, Indonesia's Janice Tjen ultimately fell short despite a strong start in her first round clash against Yulia Putintseva.
The match began well for Tjen, who took the opening set 6-3 against the 31-year-old Kazakhstani player.
However, Putintseva, a former world No 20, battled back to level the match by taking the second set 6-3.
Tjen pushed hard in the third but could not rediscover her earlier level and Putintseva edged it out 6-4 to seal a three-set victory.
Tjen, 23, reached a ranking as high as 36 earlier this year and has won one WTA Tour title in singles and three in doubles. At the 2025 Chennai Open, she became the first Indonesian woman to lift a main tour singles trophy since Angelique Widjaja.
Eala, meanwhile, will now face Magda Linette after she shocked second seed Swiatek, who lost her opening match in a WTA Tour event for the first time in 74 tournaments.
Second seed Swiatek dropped the all-Polish match-up 1-6, 7-5, 6-3 in the second round at Miami Gardens. Swiatek, like the rest of the top 32 players in the field, received a first-round bye.
Her opening-match winning streak featured trips to the quarter-finals or further in each of the past six majors, including a title run at Wimbledon last year, her sixth career Grand Slam crown.
After cruising through the first set, Swiatek struggled the rest of the way. She earned just one break point total in the second and third sets and couldn't convert.
“I stopped doing anything well tactically,” Swiatek said. “It just was a bad match for me in the second and third sets. Unconsciously, or consciously, it's hard for me to say. I need to work to get back from that, because I haven't felt things like that for like five years.
“I'll just get back to work and try to get something positive out of the practices … and try to figure it out.”
Linette told Tennis Channel: “I just had to go for a little bit more. I had to start hitting a little bit faster, too, to push her a little bit more back, not give her space. But I think it all started with serving a bit better.”
The Czech Republic's Marie Bouzkova, seeded 32nd, trounced France's Elsa Jacquemot 6-2, 6-2 in a second-round match.
In first-round action, Venus Williams fell to 0-6 on the season when she lost to Britain's Francesca Jones 7-5, 7-5. Williams, 45, has lost nine matches in a row since earning a first-round win at Washington last summer. Sloane Stephens downed Jennifer Brady 6-4, 6-2 in an all-American match-up.
