The doubles draw for the Women's Tennis Association Singapore Finals was released on Tuesday and all the attention is firmly riveted upon Sania Mirza. The world No. 1 returns to the tournament where she’s undefeated, having won it both times that she has qualified – in 2014 with Cara Black and in 2015 with Martina Hingis. This year, however, she’s vying for more than just the title defence as she reunites with former partner Hingis.
A win in Singapore would see Mirza finish off the season as the unequivocal world No. 1, having garnered 8,885 points. She faces stiff challenges in the form of the French duo of Kristina Mladenovic and Caroline Garcia, and American Bethanie Mattek-Sands, all of whom who are in the race to secure the year-end top berth.
A transition from singles to doubles
Facing pressure as she is, it’s under such an environment that Mirza thrives. A sporadic doubles player initially, Mirza had to shift her professional focus entirely towards the speciality after recurrent injuries made it difficult for her to sustain her singles career. When she played her first full season as a doubles player, in 2013, she looked to be left in the background despite having success with all the players she partnered that year.
In 2014, she continued from where she’d left off. In doing so, she not only became better, but also made everyone take notice of her as a doubles specialist. Mirza teamed up with Black during the entire 2014 season and while the two didn’t make much of a splash in the Slams, they still wrapped up the season with two titles, one of which was in Singapore, while the other came in Tokyo.
Creation of records and their preclude
The last two years have, however, seen Mirza traverse a long way ahead, making a name for herself among selected players, and legends at that. Entering the finals this week, Mirza has completed 81 successive weeks as the world’s best. She’s the only fourth player, behind Martina Navratilova, Cara Black and Liezl Huber in that order, to have spent such a lengthy time as the world No. 1. The pivot leading to this ascendance was then her partnership with Hingis.
When Mirza announced that she would be ending her brief, two-month-long partnership with Su-Wei Hsieh in February last year and teaming up with Hingis, there was a keen curiosity in knowing how the Indo-Swiss team will fare. Three immediate and consecutive titles – in Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston – later, they were the team in vogue. There again, while Hingis often gained slightly more mention in Western media for the team’s wins, as a way of their acknowledging the return of the adroit doubles player she was, it soon became obvious that both players were complementing the other.
The making of the SanTina story
Mirza’s blistering forehand and her potent baseline game was well-balanced by Hingis’ skill-sets at the net. Both were also sound in playing from their preferred side of the court – Mirza from the deuce court and Hingis from the ad court. Their playing to their strengths also saw their weaknesses being camouflaged, more so as their comfort with the other grew. None of their opponents could exploit minuses in their game and if they did so, they couldn’t hold on for long.
This impenetrability saw them ratchet a winning streak of 41 matches and eight titles, extending from the 2015 US Open to the quarter-finals in Doha in February this year. Their dominance also brought them a new nickname – SanTina, an amalgamation of their first names. It also saw them cap off the 2015 season as the joint world No. 1’s.
Sania Mirza: The sole entity shining through
2016 did not see a repeat of their highs, but it has been a year of revelations, specifically regarding the Indian. Mirza became the sole player atop the WTA rankings in August, side-lining Hingis after her win in Cincinnati alongside Barbora Strycova. She also came close to clinching the second spot for herself in the WTA finals, with Strycova, in the short frame of them teaming up.
Such then has come to be the 29-year-old’s assertion of her aptitude. Like her rankings, Mirza’s name is currently a standalone, whenever and wherever it’s mentioned. Unlike before, when she had to be the partner facing the test of playing with more experienced names – be it Black or Hingis – at the time of her choosing Strycova, it was the Czech, who was put under the proverbial microscope.
Perhaps even Hingis will be gauged the same way, when the defending champions and second seeded SanTina team will take on the Chinese Taipei siblings’ team of Hao-Ching Chan and Yung-Jan Chan on Friday, in the quarter-finals.
