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She just ended her most successful doubles partnership and finished a disappointing fourth at the Olympics, but get Sania Mirza onto the WTA tour and there’s little she wont ace.
India’s top– in fact the world’s top– women’s doubles player has just won back-to-back titles in the run-up to the last Grand Slam of the year. The latest, a win at the Connecticut Open with Monica Niculescu of Romania.
Sania and Niculescu capped off their newly rekindled doubles partnership with their first title together, a straight sets victory over Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine and Chuang Chia-Jung of Taiwan in the final. The Indo-Romanian pair won the hour and a half long match with a 7-5, 6-4 scoreline.
After pocketing a tough first set 7-5, Sania and Niculescu won a tightly contested second set 6-4 en route to lifting the trophy.
The last time Sania and Niculescu partnered up was way back in 2010, where they joined forces to reach the quarterfinals at the Western and Southern Open. They played that one more tournament together before parting ways. They now come together after Sania and Martina Hingis ended their trophy run during the Olympics. Sania then partnered with Barbora Strycova of Czech Republic at the Cincinnati Masters last week and won their debut tournament as a team, by defeating former partner Hingis and American Coco Vandeweghe.
Despite winning a title on their first tournament back together, Sania and Niculescu both made it clear that this partnership is just for the short term and both will return to their regular partners in time for the US Open.
(With inputs from PTI)
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