Liezel Huber claims top spot in doubles ranking – Tennis News
With 59 women’s doubles titles under her belt, 35-year old Liezel Huber is set to finish 2011, as the number one ranked player in the women’s double’s division. Huber is an American tennis player born in South Africa who turned
professional in 1993.
In singles competition Huber has never won any Grand Slam. She played the second round of the 1998 French Open and the 2002 Wimbledon Championships. In singles competitions she has a win/loss ratio of 175/159 but she is unmatched
when it comes to doubles’ competition.
With an impressive 676/334 win/loss ratio in her doubles career, she has won the women’s doubles title at the 2005 Wimbledon, 2007 Australian Open, 2007 Wimbledon, and the US Open of 2008 and 2011. She also won the WTA Championships
in 2007, 2008 and 2011.
In Grand Slams, she won four titles with her partner, Cara Black (Zimbabwae). At the 2011 US Open, however, she teamed with Lisa Raymond (USA) to win the title. Huber teamed up for the first time with Lisa Raymond and captured
the women’s division. They won the 2011 WTA Championships recently contested in Istanbul and proved their dominance as a team.
The WTA title win also helped Huber gain valuable points that maintained her top spot status as she ends the 2011 season. Huber has also played at doubles match at the 2008 Summer Olympic in Beijing where she was the quarterfinalist
with teammate Lindsay Davenport (USA). They were defeated in the quarterfinals by the Spanish team of Ana Isabel Garrigues and Virginia Ruano Pascual.
For Huber, the year 2011 was another action-packed season as she won a Grand Slam and had a win/loss ratio of 37/13. She also won the 2011 Dubai Tennis Championships, the 2011 Rogers Cup, the 2011 Toray Pan Pacific Open and the
2011 WTA Tour Championships.
At the Dubai Tennis Championships, she teamed with Maria Jose Martínez Sanchez (Spain) while she played the rest of the events with Lisa Raymond (USA). In four consecutive years, Huber would be ending the 2011 season as the number
one ranked women’s doubles player in the world.
In the first week of January, she will surpass Cara Black’s total weeks on number one spot. With 164 weeks as the top ranked women’s doubles player, Huber will be the second in the list of the best doubles players in the women’s
division.
Martina Navratilova (USA) with 237 consecutive weeks leads the list of women players who stayed for most number of weeks on top. Huber will be second in the list, which would serve as a morale booster as she starts her 2012 season.
CEO of the WTA, Stacey Allaster, was pleased to acknowledge Huber’s triumph. She said “Congratulations to Liezel for ending the season as WTA’s Doubles No.1 player for the fourth time in her career. Because of her consistency through
the years, Liezel is undoubtedly one of the best doubles players in the history of women’s tennis.”
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