Sania Mirza’s WTA Ranking Stands at 67
A week off actually boosted Sania Mirza’s WTA ranking by one spot, to stand at 67th, and restored her to her former 26th place in the Doubles ranking.
The hop in the Singles ranking made back one of the seven places that Sania slipped last week, after her first-round defeat to American Meghann Shaughnessy at the Bangkok Open. The pair battled for an hour and 21 minutes, with an unfortunately erratic Sania cedeing 6-4, 6-4.
However, Sania had previously scored a personal victory by knocking Martina Hingis out of the Korean Open the week before. The former world number one Hingis, currently standing at eighth place in the WTA rankings, had breezed past Mirza at the Kolkata Sunfeast Open. Not so this time. Sania ousted the top-seeded player in a nailbiting second-round match, finishing up with a score of 4-6, 6-0, 6-4.
“It is my third time to play her this year and I guess that it is third time lucky,” Sania beamed. After losing the first set, one in which both players battled to hold serve, Sania’s rocket groundstrokes pushed her through the second without dropping a game, and holding her own in the third.
“She was too good today, she played too well,” said Hingis, who was graceful and complimentary of Sania in victory as well as in defeat. “She played very well today, much better than last Saturday. I gave her more chances today. In the beginning I lost two 40-0 games. Sometimes that’s professional tennis and little things can make matches.”
“This is the fittest I’ve been in the last two years and it’s the best I’ve felt this year,” Sania said after the match, with her eye to the larger trends in her performance. “A true champion is one who comes back from being down. When I went out to serve at 5-4, I hadn’t held my serve for the last two games and I told myself to do whatever was necessary.”
Former Davis Cup captain Vijay Amritraj has come to Sania’s defence in more recent weeks, when she has begun to receive criticism following her dip in the rankings. He emphasized the need for fans to look at a player’s larger attempts to improve, rather than quibble over a single performance. “It is very tough out there and she has done remarkably well in the last three-four years,” he said. “Now she needs support from all quarters to keep going.” He conceded that Mirza has been inconsistent in her performance, but he notes that “consistency has always been an issue in tennis, or any other sport for that matter. Not everyone is like an Infosys or Wipro that the graph would go up and up. It is important to look at one whole season. I think if you do well in five-six tournaments a year, that’s quite good.”