Sania Mirza and Elena Vesnina win doubles title at Indian Wells with a bagel
Indian Sania Mirza and Russian Elena Vesnina upset the 8th seeded American pair, Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Meghann Shaughnessy in straight sets. They earned a bagel to win the Women’s Doubles title at the BNP Paribas
Open on Saturday.
The Indian and the Russian winning combination who won their first title in just third time pairing together showed their fascinating skills in this WTA Premier event. They recently reached the quarter-finals at Dubai and Doha,
and kept their winning ways in Indian Wells. In their journey to final, they upset 7thseeded Czech pair Iveta Benesova and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova by 6-2, 6-3 in the second round. Mirza and Vesnina then dumped Czech Klaudia Jans and compatriot
Alicja Rosolska with a breadstick in the quarter-finals. In semis they trashed Slovak Daniela Hantuchova and Polish Agneiszka Radwanska with a bagel. They just lost 19 games and reached the finals in their top form.
On the other side of net, Mattek-Sands and Shaughnessy were playing their fourth WTA doubles final but they could only clinch one title. The Americans were in great form in this event as they overpowered 3rd seeded pair,
American Liezel Huber and Russian Nadia Petrova in straight sets. But they ran out of luck again as they couldn’t overwhelmed the unseeded pair in the final.
The Indo - Russian pair were on fire in the opening set as they won it with a bagel in just 25 minutes. They displayed top notch performance and with their perfect co-ordination, gave no chance to the Americans to hold their serves.
Mirza and Vesnina broke the American pair’s serve three times and registered an impressive 64 percent win on his higher first serve. The pair was also successful in saving a single breakpoint they faced.
In the second set, Mattek-Sands and Shaughnessy re-formed and re-focused and were successful as they got 5-1 lead. Later Mirza and Vesnina got themselves back on track and won the next six games in a row to win the set 7-5. They
made an epic comeback in this final set and broke Americans serve three times.
"We tried playing together in Dubai and Doha and it worked fine," Vesnina said. "From our first match you could see it was already a team. It really works."
"We weren't even supposed to play here, because initially I wasn't going to play Indian Wells," Mirza said. "Now we're planning to play the rest of the year."
Mirza clinched her 10th doubles WTA title after winning this and her Russian partner won her fourth. Both ladies are in the top 30 ranking in singles.
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