Santina’s dream run comes to a halt
By Princy James, tennis correspondent
The Santina Slam won’t be happening, at least for this season. Top seed and No:1 doubles pair Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis failed to live up to the hopes as they succumbed to Czech Republic’s Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova in straight sets, 6-3 6-2, in the third round of the French Open..
Sania and Hingis had won the last three Grand Slams in a row, and were hoping to complete the Non-Calendar Year Grand Slam by clinching a title here on red dirt.
In what can be regarded a lopsided match, Sania and Hingis – fondly called ‘Santina’ – weren’t playing their usual level, as rain continued delaying the matches for a second week here in Roland Garros.
The Czech duo played remarkably good at the net and the baseline, and were able to put pressure on the top seed throughout.
“We played bad and they played good, as simple as that. Tough day, but alright. They played well, and we weren’t anywhere close to our best,” Sania gave due credit to her opponents, taking responsibility for their loss.
She didn’t blame the heavy conditions on court owing to rain, saying that they had played in similar conditions before.
Hingis admitted that her game doesn’t help with the heavy conditions. Nevertheless, the former No:1 player said that all players face such setbacks, and they should have adapted to the same.
However, things weren’t all fair on the court. Sania and Hingis were irked by two disputed line calls in the second set, and the duo had a bitter argument with the umpire.
At one point, Sania was heard saying – “You are not observing properly, or you don’t know tennis, it’s either one of them”.
Sania, however didn’t want to fixate on the issue.
When asked whether they lost the focus because of those two calls that went against they favour, she replied:
“No, not really. Those kind of things happen on the court, and we said what we had to say then on the court. We can find ten such excuses to say why we didn’t win, but the bottom line is we didn’t play good. We thought the call wasn’t the right call, but the umpire thought the other way round. The end of the day, you have to go with the umpire’s call.”
“Well, there were two calls, not one; everything went against us today. A point here and there, we can dig it, stayed with them, may be things could have changed, but it didn’t. So…,” Hingis added.
Sania remained positive, further adding that they are looking forward to move to the grass, which also is their favourite surface, especially Hingis’.
The duo didn’t disclose much about their Olympics plans, Hingis said that it was a difficult question to answer at present, given that two of her partners are injured.
