Wickmayer defeats Clijsters in Miami

Yanina Wickmayer

Yanina Wickmayer needed a host of match points to finally defeat Kim Clijsters, 6-4 7-6 and advance to the 4th round.  I must admit I did not see this coming and have had the first big scalp of my predictions this week! It sounds as if Clijsters was struggling with her movement and that she is not fully over the ankle injury she picked up in Australia.  Wickmayer played well, but did fall to pieces at the end wasting several match points on double faults.  She will play either Petra Cetkovska or Caroline Wozniacki in the next round.  

In other matches, Sabine Lisicki continued her return to form with a 6-4 7-5 victory over Peng Shuai, meanwhile Ekaterina Makarova overwhelmed Mona Barthel, 6-2 6-4... another prediction down the drain!  Lisicki will play Li in a repeat of the Wimbledon second round match that was one of the best matches of 2011.  Makarova will get another shot at Maria Sharapova having gone down to her in the Australian Open quarter-finals.  The remaining fourth round matches will be decided later today...

In the men's draw, it was business as usual for the top seeds so far.  In fact, the only seed to fall was Feliciano Lopez who lost to the in-form Albert Ramos, 6-4 7-6.  A number of interesting third round matches were set with Roger Federer to play Andy Roddick and Kevin Anderson taking on Mardy Fish.  Fish played much better in his straight sets win against Frank Dancevic, but will have to raise his game to another level against Anderson who defeated Sam Querrey in three sets today.

You can see the progress of my WTA and ATP predictions for Miami... the womens has been generally good so far although a few hiccups today!