MIAMI, Fla.—It wasn’t so long ago that Dominika Cibulkova was known for failing to finish matches she was positioned to win. Tonight, she may have driven the final nail into the coffin of that theory—a nail as sharp as the wicked forehand placements that have carried her to No. 11 in the world.
Cibulkova rallied after blowing a big lead against Venus Williams, winning their fourth-round match at the Sony Open, 6-1, 5-7, 6-3, in two hours and 19 minutes.
The score doesn’t do justice to the quality of the match, and the joint total of 32 break points (19 for Cibulkova, of which she converted eight) were less the indication of a sloppily played contest than a tribute to the ferocity and efficiency with which these two attacked each other all night long.
Make that “some” night long, for the first set was a throwaway. Williams seemed to have trouble getting her feet to move and her arm to swing for most of the first set. By the same token, Cibulkova was simply ripping the ball, bounding all over the court as she swung from the heels of feet that were more often airborne than touching cement.
Cibulkova leaped out to a 5-0 lead in no time, but Williams probably saved herself from absorbing a humiliating defeat in under an hour when she managed to get a game to avoid a whitewash. She then forced Cibulkova to work her way through multiple deuces before the Aussie Open runner-up served out the set in 34 minutes.
Prolonging the end of the set enabled Williams to get her bearings and make use of a little breathing room. She began to loosen up, although she was broken to start the second set. But then Cibulkova’s game went off a cliff. She made three errors to fall behind 0-40 and handed the break back to Williams with a double fault.
From that point forward, the tennis was highly competitive and unfailingly thrilling. The rallies were played at warp speed, and both women stretched the court as if it were a piece of taffy expanding to allow their shots to fall in.
Serving at 3-all, Williams survived two break points to hold the game and suddenly seemed both reconciled and adjusted to the breakneck pace at which Cibulkova forced the play. With both women freely going for placements, winners and errors flowed off their racquets in nearly equal measure.