Singapore, Nov 1: The world number one women’s doubles team of Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis beat Spain’s Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro in the title clash of the WTA Finals in Singapore on Sunday to claim their ninth title of the year.
The top seeds beat the eighth seeds 6-0, 6-3 in an hour and seven minutes on the hard courts of the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
The win was Mirza’s second doubles title at the WTA?Finals, having won the tournament last year with Zimbabwe’s Cara Black.
The WTA Finals is an annual event played by the top eight singles and doubles teams of the year who are divided into two round-robin groups -- red and white. The top two of each group progress to the semi-finals and the winners to the finals.
The Indo-Swiss pairing dropped serve only once through the match and broke their opponents five times to wrap up a comprehensive victory.
Mirza and Hingis are now unbeaten in 22 matches, stretching back six tournaments. In fact, since their last defeat -- to Chan Hao-Ching and Chan Yung-Jan in Cincinnati -- they have dropped just two sets.
Muguruza and Suarez Navarro -- late replacements in the draw after Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova’s withdrawal -- were completely outplayed in the match.
In the second game, Mirza unleashed a ferocious forehand to break Muguruza. The second set was more competitive, but the top seeds did not let go of their supremacy and wrapped up after little over an hour on court.
“I feel like it was a perfect day,” Hingis said. “Sania just played out of her mind - she was everywhere today, getting everything back and playing incredible tennis.”
This triumph is especially huge for the Swiss as the trophy was her 50th WTA doubles title, a milestone only 15 players have reached.
For Mirza and Hingis, the match was their 10th final together, ever since they teamed up in March this year. Apart from the Wimbledon and US?Open Grand Slams, they won Masters 1000 titles at Indian Wells and Miami, followed by the Family Circe Cup in Charleston. The pair also slept the Asian swing, winning titles in Guangzhou, Wuhan and Beijing. The only final Mirza and Hingis lost was at the Rome Masters, losing to Timea Babos of Hungary and Kristina Mladenovic of France.
The Indo-Swiss duo will end the year as the world number one doubles team, having sealed the year-end ranking by making the finals.
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