Sania Mirza has put her Rio Olympics disappointment aside, and played some amazing tennis in the women's doubles competition of late, winning her second title after her split with Martina Hingis earlier in the month. Sania, partnering Barbara Strycova, won the Cincinnati Open last week, and the Indian star, playing alongside Monica Niculescu clinched the Connecticut Open on Saturday.
The Connecticut Open final was a close encounter, with Sania-Niculescu playing against a good pairing of Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine and Chuang Chia-Jung of Taiwan. Despite a close opening set, which the Indo-Romanian pair won 7-5, they took their game to the next level in the second to win it 6-4, and with it clinch the title as well.
Such back-to-back wins for Sania in a matter of two weeks with different partners shows her class in the doubles competition. These two titles -- Cincinnati Open, Connecticut Open -- will give her immense confidence ahead of the last Grand Slam of the year, US Open.
Sania was actually thinking of giving the competition a miss, and only played after Niculescu showed her willingness to pair the world number one.
"I was actually not planning on completely playing this week. But when Monica asked me, I thought we could obviously win together," Press Trust of India quoted Sania as saying.
"We know each other for a long time. Also our games kind of suit each other, so you have that confidence. I think it helped we got a couple first easy matches in terms of the way we played. We kind of found our rhythm almost immediately."
Though the Indo-Romanian pair looked brilliant in the Connecticut Open, Sania will feature in the US Open with Strycova. The Indo-Czech pair will be a strong contender for the doubles competition in the US, especially the way they played in Cincinnati.
"I play with Barbora Strycova (in the US Open)," Sania said.
