Another dog joins the hunt: Jiri Lehecka and the anatomy of a breakthrough

Jiri Lehecka, an amiable 24-year old from Czechia, faced the daunting challenge of battling Jannik Sinner for the Miami Open title on Sunday. Lehecka did not run. He did not hide. But he did not win, either.

Sinner halted Lehecka’s inspirational run at the second Masters 1000 of the year  with a devastating combination representing both sides of the shiniest coin in tennis: lights-out serving prowess and returning proficiency that produced the only two breaks Lehecka has suffered in the entire tournament. The Italian star, seeded 19 places above his opponent at No. 2, belted his way to the title, 6-2, 6-4—a score that doesn’t do justice to the quality of the hitting  by both men.

It appears that there is a new dog in the hunt on a tour where beating “Sincaraz” is rising to the level of obsession. Last year, Lehecka’s Czech compatriot Jakub Mensik joined the pack as he recorded a sensational upset of Novak Djokovic in the final on this same court, staking his claim as a high-level contender. But besting late-career Djokovic and the ascendant 24-year old Sinner—or Carlos Alcaraz—are two very different things.

Read more: Jannik Sinner becomes first tennis player ever to win Sunshine Double without losing a set

Lehecka dazzled in previous wins over, among others, elite veteran Taylor Fritz and rising French star Arthur Fils. Nobody was able to break Lehecka’s serve, and only Fritz was able to win a set from him. The Czech pro faced only nine break points in the entire tournament before the final. Sinner stepped in to redress that imbalance by accumulating 11 break points, but he managed to convert only two. It was all he needed.

The numbers are a testament to Lehecka’s serve and the way he backed it up match-after-match with aggressive tennis. He did great work with the serve plus-one on the forehand side. In the final, he continued to look for ways to attack the net, challenging Sinner’s dead-eye passing shots.  Lehecka found himself at the net 21 times, and he won 15 of those points. It was eye-opening, attacking tennis, made possible partly by the quick speed of the court in Hard Rock Stadium.

“I came here not in good form, and I was able to come back to the tennis I want to play,” Lehecka said during the trophy presentation ceremony. He glanced over to where Sinner sat.

“It’s never easy to stand here after losing a final like that, but if I need to lose against someone it’s you, Jannik.”

There are reasons for why Lehecka has been flying under the radar for a couple of years now, despite early success culminating with a runner-up trophy at the Next Gen Finals in Milan in 2022. He was making steady progress on the tour and cracked the Top 30 by the spring of 2024. But he suffered the stress fracture of a vertebra at the Madrid Masters. It forced him to retire during his first Masters 1000 semifinal.

That injury left the Czech right-hander high and dry, barely able to move for three months. He was obliged to skip two majors and the Olympic Games, describing the latter as an especially “painful” blow. Lehecka made inroads when he returned to the tour, and gradually worked his way up to a career-high ranking of No. 16 by last September. But another, less debilitating injury early this year—a strained ankle ligament—set him back again.

“For a few weeks it was bothering me,” Lehecka explained earlier in the week. “I wasn't really happy with sliding on the hard court. I was little bit scared.  [When] you are running for drop shot, you just need to go there 100%, convinced that you are going to win that point—not thinking about whether you should go there 100% or not.”

Lehecka stands 6-foot-1, but explodes into his serve with the power of a man three inches taller and 20 lbs. heavier. Throughout the tournament, he punished rivals with his forehand plus-one blasts, aggressive returns, and wickedly angled volleys. But he realized early in the final that, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, he was not in Kansas anymore.

It’s never easy to stand here after losing a final like that, but if I need to lose against someone it’s you, Jannik. Jiri Lehecka

Broken in the third game of the match, Lehecka snapped right back to win the first three points of Sinner’s next service game. Sinner was in a hole, but he blasted his way out of it, reeling off  five consecutive first serves—three unreturnables and two gorgeous aces—to consolidate his break. The feat left Lehecka gobsmacked.

“I think it show[ed] how great a player Jannik is, how he was able to come back in a crucial moment and how he was able to help himself with the serve,” Lehecka said in his post match news conference, adding that he had “probably” only a single chance to put a return into play. He added that “Jannik [also] played very good return games, and I felt during the whole match that he's putting more and more pressure on me.”

There was just one brief interlude when it seemed that Sinner might buckle under the pressure of Lehecka’s offense. Both men held with ease in the first two games of the second set, but in the third and fifth games Sinner had Lehecka on the ropes half-a-dozen times. But he failed to capitalize on five break points. Looking slightly rattled, the Italian made a few uncharacteristic errors and pretty soon Lehecka had a 4-3 lead on serve. But Sinner reset with a hold, then broke Lehecka and served it out.

Lehecka now joins an ever-growing crowd of 25-and-under players who appear to have games big enough to become that much-anticipated “third man” who might intrude on the Sincaraz duopoly. The group includes Fils, Mensik, Lorenzo Musetti, Ben Shelton, Jack Draper and Holger Rune. Lehecka may still be the least recognizable of that cohort, but he has also shown that he just might prove to be  the most fearless. Time will tell.

“Matches like today against these guys are showing me that there is still big, big, big room for improvement,” Lehecka said. “I played, in my opinion, very good tournament here. I was very satisfied with my game. But today I again saw that there is still somewhere to go, and that I will really need to keep improving more and more.”

It’s a grand ambition for certain, but it sure beats running and hiding.