Miami Open<\/a> win over Jelena Ostapenko, a former Grand Slam champion and one of the biggest hitters on the tour.\u00a0<\/p>\nBaptiste was trying to win four consecutive main-draw matches for the first time in her career, but she knew Tiafoe was in a tight one against the defending champion, Jakub Men\u0161\u00edk, the big-serving 20-year-old Czech, who had climbed back from a one-set deficit to send their match into a deciding tiebreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was literally getting nauseous because it was so close,\u201d Baptiste said of watching the end of Tiafoe\u2019s 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-6(11) dogfight in the locker room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tiafoe had three match points from 6-3 in that tiebreak, and lost them all. On the third, a baby started wailing so loudly that their screams came over the thud-thud of the ball back and forth. Tiafoe then saved two match points before winning the match on his seventh try, when Men\u0161\u00edk sent one last ball off the court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moments before, Tiafoe was bent over with exhaustion, trying to summon the energy to hit a serve after busting his lungs on a series of baseline battles in the tiebreak. Now he was screaming with joy. Men\u0161\u00edk came over onto his side of the court and wrapped his arms around him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he let go, Tiafoe dropped his racket, ripped off and tossed his shirt, and then his sweat bands and then his headbands. For a moment, it looked like he was going to keep going with the rest of his garments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t, but he knew this was one worth celebrating, given the journey he put himself on last year when, once again, he struggled with motivation and stopped his season a month early.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have lost for sure six months ago, especially where I was at the end of last year,\u201d he said in his news conference. This is big. It\u2019s big for a lot of reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
In tennis, so much depends on grinding out quality wins, on big stages like this one in Florida, and also the ones that aren\u2019t so big. Bouncing back from losses when they come is not just a part of the sport. For all but a handful of players, it is their staple diet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m not used to it now, then I probably wouldn\u2019t be in the game for much longer,\u201d Baptiste said. \u201cIt\u2019s how the game has always been. From the beginning, you lose almost every week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Tiafoe, Baptiste lost a lot less as a child than she does now. Only in the last year has she begun to figure out the right balance between solidity and aggression. There aren\u2019t a lot of shots she doesn\u2019t have. She can mix up spins and speeds better than most women on tour.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible she\u2019s one of those players who has long had too many tools at her disposal. Figuring out when to use the right one has been a puzzle. So has keeping her head on straight when matches go sideways.<\/p>\n
Her latest coach, William Woodall, is another product of JTCC. He has helped keep Baptiste from destroying herself on the practice court every time they fill a bucket of balls. She\u2019s \u201ctraining smarter,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve known each other since we were young kids, maybe like 5 and 6 years old, so that brings a lot to his coaching game. He\u2019s worked on my mindset a lot, which has made the biggest difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Hailey-Baptiste-Miami-Open-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Hailey Baptiste\u2019s all-court tennis skills can trouble any opponent on the WTA Tour. (Matthew Stockman \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how it often is for Tiafoe, too. At 28, after some come-to-Jesus talks with his inner circle, including his agents, parents and girlfriend in the fall, he has once again recommitted himself to the work of being a professional tennis player.<\/p>\n
He set aside whether he liked it or not, because he knew no one really cared. Lots of people don\u2019t feel like going to work every day, but they do it anyway. Getting fired up for the bright lights of the U.S. Open and the lore of Wimbledon is the easy part. Being consistent, making the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells and now Miami, which he had never done before, is in some ways the harder challenge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His reward is being a part of a lineup stacked with some of the best American tennis has to offer. In the fourth round, he has joined Taylor Fritz; Alex Michelsen, a three-set winner Monday over Alejandro Tabilo; Tommy Paul, and Sebastian Korda, the slayer of world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz<\/a>. Coco Gauff, a three-set winner over Sorana C\u00eerstea Monday, and the biggest American star of them all, will play in the quarterfinals against Belinda Bencic, who blitzed another American, Amanda Anisimova, late Monday night.<\/p>\nNext up for Tiafoe? T\u00e9rence Atmane, a tricky left-hander from France with a whippy, fast serve that can be hard to time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s good,\u201d Tiafoe said. \u201cHe\u2019s a dark-horse player. He beats a lot of guys out here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Atmane, 24, is into the top 50 for the first time. It\u2019s not a bright lights match. But it\u2019s one Tiafoe now desperately wants and needs to get back to the neighborhood of the top 10, where he was not all that long ago. He and Baptiste think they now know what it will take to get there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDoing the little things,\u201d said Baptiste, who will face Aryna Sabalenka, the defending champion and world No. 1, on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe annoying things, making sure that I do them every day, whether I want to or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sounds like someone she knows very well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 A good day for the Florida transplants.\u00a0 A really good day for a Washington, D.C.-area tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1209,123,125,124,32029],"class_list":{"0":"post-206622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-miami","10":"tag-miami-headlines","11":"tag-miami-news","12":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}