I have very good memories of the inaugral Sunfeast Open held in Calcutta last year. I visited most days and loved the international standard atmosphere Netaji Indoor Stadium provided. This year, I haven’t been able to go even once but the Sania Mirza versus Martina Hingis semi is not one to be missed and needless to say, I will be there and am looking forward to it.

Looking at their head to head, the only time they faced each other in Dubai earlier this year ended up in a close enouncter with Hingis prevailing 6-3 7-5. Since then, Hingis has had more exposure and she is deep into her come back now. The big wins haven’t come yet for Hingis and she is unlikely to be fazed by a loud Calcutta crowd. Mirza will have to go for the win rather than expect Hingis to hand the match to her via unforced errors.

Mirza has also left the ankle injury in the past. The injury had meant that she has had an ordinary year but things started looking up around the US Open. A few weeks ago, Mirza tried to reduce the hype around her and the negative attention the media was giving over her not improving in rankings saying that winning a grandslam wasn’t one of her primary goals. It is an intellegent strategy as expectations reduce to some degree and Mirza can focus on her game much more.

We do not know if Mirza is back to 100% fitness. However, she seems much improved of late. A WTA title to end the year will be just perfect to end what seems a disappointing year. However, people should not make too much out of 2006 for Mirza because of the injuries she had. She has made tremendous progress over all in her career if we look at the time period and the ranking she has achieved in the given period. 2007 should be a much better year where we will should see another marked improvement.

For now, I will just enjoy the tennis and hopefully witness a Mirza double win - in singles and doubles.

[CNN report]

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 at 3:59 am and is filed under Tennis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.