NEWS MIAMI OPEN 2015. SLOANE STEPHENS WIN´S; BELINDA BENCIC OUT.

For only the fifth time in the tournament’s three-decade history, an unseeded player has reached the women’s quarterfinals of the Miami Open. Sloane Stephens, who hails from nearby Fort Lauderdale, knocked off Belinda Becic of Switzerland 6-4 7-6 (5) to advance Monday at Crandon Park Tennis Center. 

The match, a battle between two of the WTA’s talented young players in the 22-year-old Stephens and 18-year-old Bencic, took two hours and seven minutes to finish. “It's awesome. Obviously I have a lot of friends and family here in South Florida, so it's really nice for me,” Stephens said. “Growing up here, I mean, I'm used to playing here. I played Orange Bowl here and played this tournament a lot. It's home, so it's really nice for me.
” Stephens, as well as No. 12 seed Carla Suarez Navarro, and No. 27 seed Sabine Lisicki, advanced to the quarterfinals of the Miami Open for the first time Monday. It’s been a solid three weeks so far for Stephens – she reached the round of 16 at Indian Wells – after a tough 2014 season in which she failed to get past the round of 32 in most of her tournament appearances. 
 “I’m definitely not focused on anything that happened in the past,” Stephens said. “I’m going forward and just getting out there and competing, trying to do my best every match.”