Sania Mirza achieved yet another career milestone by capturing her 25th WTA doubles title as the Indian continued her dream start with Martina Hingis to win the Miami Open trophy, here on Sunday.
The top-seeded Indo-Swiss pair overcame a sluggish start to take the title with a 7-5, 6-1 scoreline against second-seeded Russians Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina.
Sania and Hingis were trailing 2-5 in the opening set but regrouped and turned the tables on their fierce opponents by reeling off eight games in a row.
They had beaten the same Russian duo at Indian Wells to win their first title together.
It has been an absolute dream start for Sania and Hingis as they are yet to lose a set since they began their partnership.
“We just tried to keep telling each other to enjoy the struggle. Last week 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,” Sania said after the match.
Tips from Imran Mirza
Hingis credited the win to tips provided by Sania’s farther Imran Mirza during the match.
“Today the coaching really turned it around — your dad came on court,” Hingis said to Sania.
“The most important thing is that we never stopped believing we’re a great team. They played a great set to get us to that position, 5-2 down. Then we just tried to stay in there and get our chances. We just built on every point, which is what we did well last week too,” the Swiss great, who now has 43 doubles titles, said.
With this win, Sania and Hingis now will move to No. 3 from nine in the Road To Singapore doubles leaderboard.
She took a giant leap towards becoming world No. 1 player in the doubles by pocketing 1000 ranking points, following her stupendous title win in the Miami Open.
Sania’s ranking remained at number three but she closed the gap to just 145 points with the world No. 1 Italians Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci, who both have 7640 points each.
