Sania Mirza is now celebrating her 80th week as World No 1 in the doubles department and she took to Twitter to thank the fans to applaud the momentous occasion. “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,” she said on Twitter.
Mirza’s journey at the helm of the ranking charts began with former partner Martina Hingis with a win at the Volvo Car Open in Charleston.
The Hyderabadi tennis player’s run up to the top of the charts began with an impressive 2014 when she partnered with Zimbabwe’s Cara Black with the duo capping off the season by winning the WTA Finals in Singapore. That is when the pair split as Black wished to focus on her family.
Mirza continued unaffected to partner with Bethanie Mattek-Sands before joining forces with Hingis in the middle of the season. “Santina” as they came to be known became a force in the women’s doubles department won their first 14 matches together including titles at Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston.
That final win at Charleston helped Mirza seal the top spot – a rarity for women in sports and the first time a female Indian tennis player took to the pinnacle of the sport.
“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. “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,” she added.
Fast forward to a few months back, ‘Santina’ had a disappointing season and in a surprise move, decided to part ways in August. Since then, Mirza is playing with Barbora Strycova and Hingis with CoCo Vandeweghe. The duo were on the opposite end of the net in the first week since the split when they faced off in the final of Cincinnati. And Mirza-Strycova came out on top to give the Indian sole ownership of the No. 1 ranking.
As Mirza celebrated 80 weeks at the top, former Indian batsman and current commentator Sanjay Manjrekar looked to rain on her parade by suggesting that her accomplishment is as a doubles player – not a singles player.