WTA Stuttgart: Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis reach final

The top-ranked women’s doubles pair of Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis rebounded from their recent inconsistent performances to reach the final of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix at Stuttgart on Saturday. They beat the unseeded Czech-German combine of Lucie Safarova and Sabine Lisicki, 6-4, 7-5 in the semi-finals.

It was not an easy affair, though. Safarova is an accomplished doubles exponent and won two Grand Slam titles last year one of which is the French Open. For Lisicki, this is a happy hunting ground in doubles as she had won the title twice before.

The first set witnessed as many as seven breaks of serve out of which the Indo-Swiss pair managed to make in-roads into their opponents’ games four times.

The trend continued in the second set too which also saw the two pairs trading a total of five breaks. Hingis and Mirza got a chance to serve out the match at 5-3 but the German-Czech duo saved three match points with some excellent returns.

The top seeds then succeeded in securing another crucial break which presented them the win.

In the final of their first clay court event this season, Hingis and Mirza will meet the winner of the semi-final contest between second seeds Caroline Garcia/Kristina Mladenovic and Anna-Lena Groenefeld/Kveta Peschke.

This is the first final for the three-time Grand Slam champions since winning the St. Petersburg title in February. They had suffered early exits at each of their last three tournaments at Doha, Indian Wells and Miami.