Tennis News

Sania Mirza celebrates her 80th consecutive week as the doubles World No.1 this week. Mirza became the first Indian woman to hold the No.1 ranking last season after winning the Volvo Car Open in Charleston with her former partner Martina Hingis.

Today I complete 80 consecutive weeks as the number 1 player in d world?its been an amazing journey and just inspires me to work harder @WTA pic.twitter.com/BsHoeU0YAT

— Sania Mirza (@MirzaSania) October 18, 2016

Mirza’s charge towards No.1 began in 2014. Pairing with Cara Black the duo made the semifinals or better at 10 of their 22 events and closed out their season by winning 14 of the their final 16 matches. Mirza and Black capped off their fantastic season by winning the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global. The successful team parted ways after that win due to Black’s desire to focus on her young family, and Mirza would win the Brisbane International title with Bethanie Mattek-Sands before finding immediate success with Martina Hingis. Team “SanTina” won their first 14 matches together, including titles at the BNP Paribas Open, Miami Open, and Volvo Car Open. With that 14th win, a 6-0, 6-4 win over Casey Dellacqua and Darija Jurak in the Charleston final, Mirza made history and fulfilled a lifelong dream.

The Indian star was finally the World No.1. The milestone was a big statement for Indian women in sports, where women athletes have yet to stand on equal ground.

“You have to believe that as a woman and as a girl you are not a weakness; you’re a strength,” Mirza said after winning in Charleston last year. “Anything is possible. If you put your mind to it, you put sacrifices to it, you put hard work to it, anything is possible, no matter where you’re from. Even if that means you’ve grown up playing on courts made of cow dung. And I think for me that’s women empowerment, and I hope that we get there one day where women believe that anything is possible.”

“I’m used to people rolling their eyes,” Mirza said after winning Charleston. “Tennis at that point when I was six years old, there was no clay courts; there was no hard courts. We used to play and practice on courts made out of cow s***. No jokes. I mean that was the only court that was available.”

“So to come from there and pick up a tennis racquet and have the guts to say, okay, I am going to go and play at the highest level in the world is against all odds. Whether I got to No. 1 or not, it would have always been worth it, but now, today, to me and myself, I’m so happy to give this back to my country, to be the first ever No. 1 from India.”

“We all have a story. Every tennis player out there has an amazing story. And it all just seems worth it today. And no one can take it away from me.”

Since taking over the top spot, Mirza has had to fend off a charge from her former doubles partner for the No.1 ranking. After Mirza and Hingis split ways this summer, the two faced off with their new partners in their very next tournament, in the final of the Western & Southern Open. If Mirza and her partner, Barbora Strycova won, Mirza would hold on to No.1. If Hingis and her partner CoCo Vandeweghe won, Hingis would hold on to No.1. Mirza and Strycova rallied from behind to win their first title together, giving Mirza sole ownership of the No.1 ranking.

“I think as tennis players it means a lot to us,” Mirza said in Cincinnati. “Imagine being No. 1 at what you do in the whole planet. I’ve had that privilege for the last year and a half.

“We all want to be No. 1. That’s why we play tennis. Very few people get to be No. 1 in the world. It’s the thing as an athlete you dream as a child. To be No.1 in the world is the most amazing thing.”

Photos courtesy of Getty Images

SINGAPORE – Last year’s semifinalist Garbiñe Muguruza returns to Singapore looking to end and an up and down season on a high note.

1. Twice is Nice.
Garbiñe Muguruza makes her second consecutive appearance in the Singapore singles competition following her debut last year, where she reached the semifinals after finishing 3-0 in round robin play.

2. Double Threat.
It will be her third consecutive appearance at the WTA Finals, having qualified first in doubles with compatriot Carla Suárez Navarro in 2014 and 2015 when they reached the final.

3. Rocking Round Robin.
Last year, she went 3-0 in the round-robin stage of the singles competition, losing to eventual champion Agnieszka Radwanska in the semifinals.

4. Fabulous in France.
Muguruza is the reigning Roland Garros champion, picking up her first-ever Grand Slam title by beating then-World No.1 Serena Williams in the final.

5. First Slam.
The Spaniard became the youngest first-time Grand Slam champion (22 years, 7 months) since Victoria Azarenka, who won the 2012 Australian Open aged 22 years, 6 months.

6. Breakthrough season.
Muguruza’s French Open win followed her brilliant 2015 season, when she finished the year as World No.3.

Esta es la foto que quería. This is the photo I really like. @rolandgarros pic.twitter.com/5mAZjyXn1e

— Garbiñe Muguruza (@GarbiMuguruza) 4 June 2016

7. Early exits.
Her Slam record in the second half of 2016 has seen her signature peaks and valleys, losing to Jana Cepelova, 6-3, 6-2, at Wimbledon, and to Latvia’s Anastasija Sevastova, 7-5, 6-4, at the US Open – both in the second round.

8. Terrific on tour.
Muguruza nonetheless made semifinal appearances at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia and the Western & Southern Open, plus quarterfinals at the Qatar Total Open , Porsche Tennis Grand Prix and the Toray Pan Pacific Open.

9. Limping in Linz.
She has not had the ideal preparation for Singapore; she was forced to withdraw from a quarterfinal encounter with Viktorija Golubic in Linz after rolling her ankle.

10. Rankings rise.
She hit a career-high of World No.2 after the French Open – and will be ready to push on from her current slot of World No.6 as she looks ahead to 2017.

DUBAI, UAE – Reigning Olympic Gold medalist Monica Puig continued her solid February form, beating Yaroslava Shvedova, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 to advance at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships.

After a slow start to the season, which saw her go 1-3 in January, Puig opted to refocus her training on the practice courts after the Australian summer. Out of the spotlight and back at her base in Boca Raton, Florida, the 23-year-old was able to put in the work that was missing in the pre-season.

“I think post-Australian Open was a really big change for me, because I really just buckled down and I said, ‘Look, this can go one of two ways: It can go really bad or it can go really well.'” she told press after the match. “I’m just going to work as hard as I can. If I lose, at least I know that I’m doing everything in my power to come out and win. And then I go back to the drawing board and just fix it.”

The hard work paid off immediately. In her first tournament since Melbourne, she made the semifinals of the Qatar Total Open last week, her first semifinal since the Olympic tennis event in Rio de Janeiro.

“Right now that’s on my mind is just trying to become the best I can be, and I know that the only way to do that is by working. I don’t mind staying on the tennis court a little while longer.”

Puig’s motivation has never been in doubt but she has been candid about how her incredible run to the gold medal last summer led to a cloud of pressure and negativity that bled into her game.

“It was a great week for me in Rio, and it was really good, but the fact of the matter is I didn’t back it up afterward,” she said. “So right now I’m just trying to get back to feeling comfortable, playing at that level consistently. And right now I’m doing a great job, I think. I’m working really hard. I’m giving my 100% in tennis, and I’m just focused on this right now. This is consuming my whole life.

“I just really want this really bad. So I’m going to do whatever it takes. If that’s training more, if that’s fixing the little things, it doesn’t matter for me. I really love what I do and I really love playing tennis. I’m just going to work really hard to accomplish some more of my dreams.”

In order to plug into her game, Puig has had to unplug from social media. In January, Puig told WTA Insider that the constant negativity she received on social media after her sub-par finish to the season dragged her down. After a three-week break from social media platform during the off-season, Puig took a concerted effort to take a step back.

“My New Year’s resolution is to not get caught up in what other people say about me,” Puig said in January. “I can go lingering into social media and that’s not a good thing. I have gotten a lot of negative comments. I have a lot of people who don’t really like me. I look at it and it’s really bad.

“They don’t know what we’re going through, they don’t know the struggles. They don’t know what goes on behind the scenes and they don’t know how hard we work. If they were put in our position maybe they would appreciate it a little bit more. So this year I’m trying to block the noises outside the court that affect me negatively.”

“It used to make me happy,” Puig added of social media. “All of a sudden it makes me miserable. So why should I continue to do something that makes feel this way. I just don’t really want to be there anymore. I get on it when I need to post something or if I get a notification of something I have to do, then ok. But I don’t really like to get caught up in it too much.

“My main goal this year is to be happy. Even though I won Rio, there were a lot of moments at the end of 2016 when I was very unhappy when I let the results get the best of me and I let the negative voices get the best of me and that brought me down into a little bit of a depression.”

“I’m doing what I love for a living and if I’m not happy, what am I doing?”

Slowly but surely, Puig is finding the answers by focusing on the basics and simplifying her outlook. The gold medal from Rio sits in her home and she still brushes it off every now and then to remind herself that anything is possible on any given week. But for now, it’s more about working and less about dreaming.

“I do have my goals and I have them set, but right now I think the biggest thing is focusing on the process, because if I get too result-oriented, then I lose sight of what’s important,” Puig said. “And right now what’s important is to continue to grow as a tennis player and as a person.

“I feel like maturity is something that I have to work on and that I’m going to continue to work on. I’m in no rush to get anywhere. I proved that to myself that anything great can happen at any time. I just have to work really hard to get there.”

Puig next plays No.15 seed Caroline Garcia in the second round.

All photos courtesy of Getty Images.

SINGAPORE – Most of the time, players tend to offer identical analysis of a tournament’s court speed. Clay is slower than hardcourts, which are, in turn, slower than grass and indoor courts. But within that hierarchy lies a maddening gradient of quick clay courts and slow hardcourts that can make it difficult to assess which court will favor a player on any given week.

Speaking at Saturday’s All-Access hour, Agnieszka Radwanska, Simona Halep, Karolina Pliskova, Garbiñe Muguruza, Madison Keys, and Dominika Cibulkova were all asked to give their take on the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global’s Centre Court. The consensus was admittedly hard to gauge.

“I don’t remember last year, but I think it’s so slow,” Muguruza said. “It’s so slow. I think there’s going to be hard matches in that surface.

“But I love the court. It’s such a great show and environment, so we’ll put the effort there.”

Coming from the Generali Ladies Linz, Keys agreed that the court was slower than a player might find at the average indoor, but even that criticism is relative.

“They’re playing a little bit slower than what Linz was playing, but it was actually really nice to be able to go and play an indoor tournament and then come here. It feels pretty similar. The ball stays really low. Definitely a faster court, so I’m not complaining about that.”

Winning Linz to qualify for Singapore, Cibulkova thought it had less to do with speed and more to do with bounce, which will be crucial for the big-hitting Slovak to get her rhythm on Sunday’s first round robin match against Halep.

“I thought the surface would be pretty similar [to Linz], but it’s not. It’s very different. It bounces and it’s a little bit faster.

“So I still have to get used to it. It’s good that it’s at least indoor, that I don’t have to get used to indoor and outdoor.”

Runner-up in 2014, Halep pointed to the slowness of the court as one of the reasons why she liked playing at the WTA Finals, but Pliskova wasn’t sure the court played as slow as her colleagues insisted.

“I definitely wouldn’t say it’s fast, but it could be slower. I’ve played on slower surfaces so I was expecting it’s going to be even slower what I heard from last year from the girls.

“I would say it’s somewhere in the middle. For the serve I think it’s pretty fast, but when you play the rally it’s not that fast.

“Hopefully for the crowd they are going to see some rallies and good shots from the players.”

One would expect Radwanska, the defending champion, to have the definitive answer when it came to court speed. The Pole ultimately seemed as mystified as her peers, but if there’s one thing the shotmaker knows how to do on any surface, it’s improvise:

Q. You were here a couple days ago. One of earliest players here. Have you had a hit on court? Have the conditions changed from last year?
AGNIESZKA RADWANSKA: I think, of course, the surface is very similar [to last year]. It’s the same. I think it’s a bit faster because it’s already been used [this week]. But I don’t think it’s that slow as last year. That’s what I notice.

But, well, it’s always a little bit tough for us to play indoors. I think I just play one indoor tournament in Stuttgart and then here. It’s good to be here a couple days earlier to adjust to the conditions.

All photos courtesy of Getty Images.