Sania Mirza plans Hajj pilgrimage, focuses on spiritual journey
Sania Mirza announces her upcoming pilgrimage to Hajj, embracing a spiritual journey while bidding farewell to her tennis career.
India's Sania Mirza and her doubles partner Barbara Strycova crashed out of the BNP Paribas Open in the quarter-finals on Tuesday.
The Indo-Czech pair suffered a straight sets 4-6, 4-6 defeat against Swtzerland's Martina Hingis and Taiwan's Yung-jan Chan in the quarter-final.
Hingis is of course, Mirza’s former partner and the two had parted ways at the end of 2016 after a barren stretch had put pressure on the duo.
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Hingis paired up with Chan at the start of the Middle East Swing, reaching the semifinals of the Qatar Open and the quarterfinals of the Dubai Championships. Taking on Mirza and Strycova for the first time since switching partners, Hingis overcame tough opposition with the Taiwanese star by her side, ousting their higher-seeded opponents in just over an hour and 20 minutes.
Chan formerly served as stiff competition to both Hingis and Mirza when she played with sister Chan Hao-Ching, winning the last match against the team formerly known as ‘Santina' before they went on a 41-match winning streak from the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2016, playing quite a few tough matches against the pair in between.
Up next for the No.6 seeds will be the winner of an interesting quarterfinal between top seeds and reigning Australian Open champions Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Safarova and the unseeded pair of Kristina Mladenovic and Svetlana Kuznetsova.
Mladenovic is playing her first event with her new partner since splitting with co-French Open champion Caroline Garcia after Dubai.
Mattek-Sands and Safarova could wrest the top spot on the leaderboard from current No.1s Andrea Hlavackova and Peng Shuai by beating Mladenovic and Kuznetsova. If they don't reach the final, No.2 seed and Olympic Gold medalists Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina could get to No.1 if they win the title.
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