The second leg of the Sunshine Swing will take place in Miami, Florida, with 96 WTA players vying for a share of $9,415,725 in prize money and a WTA 1000 title.<\/p>\n
World #1 Aryna Sabalenka is the defending champion. She defeated Jessica Pegula in last year’s final. No woman has successfully defended the Miami Open title since Ashleigh Barty in 2021.<\/p>\n
The last four winners were all first-time champions in the event. Elena Rybakina arrives in Miami with a new career high ranking of World No. 2, while Iga Swiatek will have a point to prove after three quarterfinal defeats this season. Eight women have received wild cards into the main draw.<\/p>\n
Leading the wild card list is tennis icon, Venus Williams. The seven-time Grand Slam singles champion will make an astonishing 23rd appearance at the Miami Open. Williams, 45, is a three-time champion at the event, although the last of those triumphs came 25 years ago.<\/p>\n
The other former champion to receive a wild card is Sloane Stephens. The 32-year-old famously won this tournament when it was last held at Crandon Park in Key Biscayne eight years ago. Stephens is winless in her last three matches and didn’t compete in Miami last season.<\/p>\n
Former Australian Open finalist Jennifer Brady has also received a wild card. Brady made her comeback from long-term injury at the end of January and played in her first WTA 1000 post-injury in Indian Wells a week ago. She last competed in Miami in 2021.<\/p>\n
Austrian tennis talent Lilli Tagger will make her Miami Open debut. The 2025 French Open junior champion is closing in on a Top 100 breakthrough and won her first match at this level in Indian Wells.<\/p>\n
Ashlyn Krueger produced her best run at the Miami Open last season when she reached the round of 16. The 21-year-old Texan has received the fifth wild card spot this year.<\/p>\n
Completing the women’s wild card list are former doubles #1 Taylor Townsend, 2025 NCAA singles champion Darja Vidmanova, and former junior world #1 Emerson Jones.<\/p>\n
Main photo credit: Syndication: Desert Sun\/USAToday Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The second leg of the Sunshine Swing will take place in Miami, Florida, with 96 WTA players vying for a share of $9,415,725 in prize money and a WTA 1000 title. World #1 Aryna Sabalenka is the defending champion. She defeated Jessica Pegula in last year’s final. No woman has successfully defended the Miami Open […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":87034,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[43299,42712,621,43404,2760,463,58,70],"class_list":["post-99534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wta","category-news","tag-darja-vidmanova","tag-emerson-jones","tag-jennifer-brady","tag-lilli-tagger","tag-miami-open","tag-sloane-stephens","tag-taylor-townsend","tag-venus-williams"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99534"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99554,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99534\/revisions\/99554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}