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Update : 22 August, 2016 13:47 pm

Sania Mirza clinches world No 1 spot in women’s doubles after winning Cincinnati title

The Indian Express
Sania Mirza clinches world No 1 spot in women’s doubles after winning Cincinnati title

Sania Mirza moved to the number one spot in the WTA doubles rankings after she teamed up with her new partner, Barbora Strycova. Together they beat Martina Hingis and Coco Vandeweghe 7-5, 6-4 in Sunday’s Cincinnati final. Mirza is set to take sole possession of the highest rank, according to the reports, after spliting from her former partner, Martin Hingis.

Mirza had a disappointing run at this year’s Summer Games after failing to win a medal in both singles and doubles events. But that didn’t affect her performance in Cincinnati and her partnering up with Czech Republic’s Strycova proved to be quite beneficial for the ace tennis star.

Hingis had a successful stint at the Olympics as she won silver for Switzerland with Timea Bacsinszky. Though, both Hingis and Mirza have officially ended their partnership in the mixed doubles, they will be seen together in October’s WTA Tour Championships in Singapore.

Earlier, Mirza and Hingis had maintained that the decision to end their successful partnership was due to the failure to achieve the “desired results”.

The duo said in a joint statement: “After three Grand Slam victories and eleven WTA doubles titles together, we have mutually agreed that we would each be open to playing with other players for the remainder of the season. Perhaps, because of our great past results, we have had very high expectations from our partnership and unfortunately did not get the results we desired recently. We would like to clarify that it was a totally professional decision based purely on our recent results.”

Sania and the Swiss great began their partnership last year in March with a bang, winning three titles on the trot — at Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston.

 The pair also clarified that the split would not affect their “wonderful” personal relationship in any way.

“The professional decision has not and will not in any way affect the wonderful personal relationship that we continue to share. We also look forward to defending our title in the year-end WTA Finals in Singapore in October for which Santina has already qualified. We hope that this puts to rest some of the fabricated stories that have been doing the rounds in some sections of the media.”

The duo have claimed 14 titles, including three Grand Slams.