
The Miami Open, also known as the Miami Masters, is a men's and women's tennis tournament held on the hard courts of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, United States, during the months of March and April.
The event was originally known as the Lipton International Players Championships. In 2000 it was renamed for sponsorship reasons to the Ericsson Open. In 2002, the name of the tournament was changed to the NASDAQ-100 Open. In 2007 it took on the name Sony Ericsson Open, while from 2013 the name is Sony Open Tennis. Since 2015 it has been known as Miami Open presented by Itaú. It was voted by tennis players as the best category tournament 3 times, from 1998 to 2000 and 6 times in the superior category from 2002 to 2006 and in 2008.
The idea of creating a tournament in Miami emerged in 1960 and in 1968 the WCT Miami Open was inaugurated, a tournament reserved for male tennis players which took place until 1978. The first editions were part of the WCT circuit, while those of 1977 and 1978 were enter the Grand Prix circuit. It was one of nine tournaments in the Championships Series, whose importance came immediately after that of the Grand Slam events.
In 1990, the creation of the Championship Series tournaments, forerunners of the current Masters 1000, brought about a change in the format of the Miami tournament. The lot of players was reduced to 96 and only the final was played to the best of five sets. In its first edition with the new formula, the Miami Masters saw the victory of the young Andre Agassi. In 1990 it was decided to build the center court which persists to this day.
The Miami Masters is won for the first time by one of the members of the Big Four in 2005 with the first success of Roger Federer. The latter takes his revenge on Rafael Nadal, while the Iberian was leading 2 sets to 0 (2-6, 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 6-1).