American beats No 1 seed 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 at Miami Open
‘Sebi was incredible today. Played such a great game’
An hour after his first catastrophic attempt at snuffing out the best player in the world, Sebastian Korda stepped up to the baseline to serve for his rollercoaster third-round match against Carlos Alcaraz once again.
It would have been reasonable for the American to feel his tension even more profoundly, to collapse even more dramatically, but his determination won through. In front of his home crowd in his home state, Korda kept his head and held his nerve to close out the greatest upset of the ATP season and his career, defeating the top seed Alcaraz 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 in the third round of the Miami Open.
This was a seismic upset secured by a supreme performance from Korda, the 32nd seed. For an hour, he played as well as he could. His serve was dominant, completely shutting one of the best returners in the game out of all of his service games. He pulverised the ball with his clean, destructive ground strokes. He could do anything he wanted with the ball, volleying brilliantly as he frequently closed down the net and matching Alcaraz’s variation with impressive feel of his own.
