{"id":499269,"date":"2026-03-28T01:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T01:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/499269\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T01:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T01:31:08","slug":"jiri-lehecka-cruises-past-arthur-fils-in-straight-sets-to-reach-miami-open-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/499269\/","title":{"rendered":"Jiri Lehecka cruises past Arthur Fils in straight sets to reach Miami Open final"},"content":{"rendered":"

Czech Jiri Lehecka dominated France’s Arthur Fils 6-2, 6-2 on Friday to reach the men’s final at the ATP and WTA Miami Open.<\/p>\n

Fils<\/a>, the 28th seed, had not dropped his serve in the tournament but was broken four times by 21st-seeded Lehecka<\/a>, who advanced after 75 minutes at Hard Rock Stadium, home of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins.<\/p>\n

Lehecka will play in Sunday’s championship match against the winner of a later semi-final between world number two Jannik Sinner<\/a> of Italy and fourth-ranked Alexander Zverev<\/a> of Germany.<\/p>\n

Sinner is trying to become the first man to complete the “Sunshine Double” by winning titles at Indian Wells and Miami since Roger Federer<\/a> in 2017.<\/p>\n

Also attempting to complete the “Sunshine Double” is world number one Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> of Belarus, who plays in Saturday’s WTA final against fourth-seeded American Coco Gauff.<\/p>\n

Lehecka didn’t face a break point and broke Fils for the first time in the tournament in the opening game of the match when the Frenchman netted a forehand.<\/p>\n

Lehecka broke Fils again for a 5-2 lead on a netted Fils backhand.<\/p>\n

Lehecka broke Fils early in the second set and again on a backhand cross court service return winner for a 5-2 lead, then held serve for the triumph, leveling his career mark against Fils at 2-2.<\/p>\n

Lehecka, 24, seeks his third ATP title after Adelaide in 2024 and Brisbane in 2025. It’s the eighth career final for the Czech but his first at the elite Masters 1000 level.<\/p>\n

Fils injured his back at last year’s French Open and returned only last month, when he\u00a0was a runner-up at Doha and beat Lehecka in a quarter-final.<\/p>\n

It was the first Masters 1000-level semi-final for Fils and just the second for Lehecka after 2024 at Madrid, when he retired due to a back injury that sidelined him for more than three months.<\/p>\n

Lehecka is winless in three matches against Sinner without taking a set and 1-1 against Zverev.<\/p>\n

Sinner hopes to reach the final and continue his streak of 30 consecutive sets won at the Masters 1000 level.<\/p>\n

Sinner leads the career rivalry with Zverev 7-4 and owns a six-match win streak over Zverev, who last beat the Italian in 2023. Sinner’s run includes a victory over the German two weeks ago in the Indian Wells semifinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Czech Jiri Lehecka dominated France’s Arthur Fils 6-2, 6-2 on Friday to reach the men’s final at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-499269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}