Dubai: Indian tennis’ pin-up girl Sania Mirza is no Anna Kournikova when it comes to the glamour stakes, but by winning her 25th career WTA title with Martina Hingis at the Miami Open on Sunday, she must have reminded the Swiss Miss of her glory days with the Russian bombshell.
The 34-year-old Hingis has had a remarkable comeback to tennis after once being ranked No. 1 in both singles and doubles, topping off with back-to-back titles at Indian Wells and Miami with her latest partner Mirza, wins that have taken the Indian to within 145 points of being the world No. 1 in women’s doubles.
Incidentally, Kournikova too reached the No. 1 ranking in women’s doubles when playing with Hingis before her tennis career ended prematurely at the age of 21 due to injuries.
Mirza, now 28, has overcome serious wrist injury problems herself that put paid to her once promising singles career when she rose to No. 27 in the world. Hingis has been among her high-profile scalps in singles and the duo faced off again on the opposite side of the net during the US Open semi-finals in 2014 when she paired Cara Black and Hingis partnered Flavia Pennetta. Mirza may have lost that battle but she won the biggest title of her doubles career when she and Black took the year-ending WTA Tour Championships, her last with Black.
Mirza and Hingis then decided to come together ahead of the Indian Wells tournament and the top-seeded pair has not dropped a set in their first two tournaments despite coming close to doing so at 2-5 down in the first set of their final in Miami against the second seeded Russian duo of Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina.
“We just tried to keep telling each other to enjoy the struggle,” Mirza said. “Last week [at Indian Wells] everything came very, very easily to us - we didn’t lose more than four games in a set. Over here we were down, and we were panicking. It was like, ‘Oh my God, we’re not playing well.’ We just weren’t used to that.”
“But it’s good to fight through those matches and believe, and come out now and be like, ‘At 5-3 I was gutsy to hit a big serve,’ or she made a huge move at 5-4, if that makes sense. So it’s good,” Hingis added.
The Swiss-Indian pair also talked about how an on-court coaching visit helped them turn it around.
“Today the coaching really turned it around - your dad came on court,” Hingis said to Mirza.
The duo will now jump from ninth to third position in the WTA rankings as a result of the victory. And while they may not yet be the Spice Girls of tennis – as Hingis and Kournikova referred to themselves – they have certainly managed to add spice to the often overlooked world of women’s doubles.
