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Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza created history by becoming the first woman from the country to top WTA rankings on Sunday.
Following her great win in the WTA Family Circle Cup with partner Martina Hingis in Charleston, Sania now becomes the first player from India to sit atop the WTA doubles rankings. Sania took 470 points from the win, chalking up 7965 points to steer ahead of Italian Sara Errani (7640) and Roberta Vinci (7640) in the WTA women's rankings. Remarkably, since pairing up in March, Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis haven't lost a single match, winning three titles back-to-back in Indian Wells and in Miami. They have only lost three games in 14 matches spread over three tournaments and two months.
The Indo-Swiss pair, top seeds in the tournament, completely demolished opponents Casey Dellacqua (Australia) and Darija Jurak (Croatia) 6-0, 6-4 in just under an hour in a lopsided contest, to pocket $ 731,000 on the clay court. They bageled their rivals in the opening set in a mere 22 minutes and have become the team to beat in the women's circuit now. The second set was longer and Sania, momentarily overtaken by the nervousness of the momentous landmark, even gave up a game towards the end. However they were 4-1 in the lead and despite some fight, the Australian-Croatian pair were never in hunt.
Their quarter finals and semi-finals games were far more closely fought, testing affairs. In the quarters, they survived a hard-fought encounter against A. Medina Garrigues / Y. Shvedova 7-5, 4-6, 13-11 while in the semis, they overcame A. Kudryavtseva / A. Pavlyuchenkova in a tough 6-4, 1-6, 10-7 see-saw battle.
Sania, who was once ranked within Top-30 of WTA rankings in Singles, chooses to focus on doubles following her lengthy recuperation from a wrist injury in 2008-09 season. That, however, has hardly whetted her appetite for big wins and continued excellence on the circuit. She has regularly kicked off the season in surfaces as varied as Doha, Dubai, Hamburg and Singapore in past three years with handy wins with different partners like Bethany Mattek-Sands, Liezel Huber and Elena Vesnina.
