The women’s doubles final at the 2017 Miami Open will see the third seeded Indo-Czech pairing of Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova take on the unseeded Canadian-Chinese team of Gabriela Dabrowski and Yifan Xu.

Mirza and Strycova are trying to win their first title as a team this year. They had previously lost the Sydney Open final to Timea Babos and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in January. Meanwhile, Mirza has already won a WTA doubles title this year, partnering Bethanie Mattek-Sands, at the Brisbane Open in January as well.

Mirza-Strycova advance, fourth seeds falter

Mirza and Strycova defeated the fifth seeded Swiss-Chinese Taipei pair of Martina Hingis and Yung-Jan Chan 6-7(6), 6-1, 10-4 in their semi-final that was played on Friday. The higher seeds lost the first set in a tightly contested tie-breaker, 8-6. The momentum, however, shifted completely in their direction in the second set as they levelled the match, dropping just one game across the set.

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In the super tie-break, Mirza and Strycova took an early lead to go up 3-0, but found their three-point lead margin whittled down to one, at 5-4. There were, however, no further comebacks from Hingis and Chan as Mirza and Strycova reeled off five successive points to win the match in an hour and 28 minutes.

Previously, on the same day, Dabrowski and Xu upset the fourth seeded Czech-Chinese team of Andrea Hlavackova and Shuai Peng 7-5, 5-7, 10-7. Multiple breaks of serve were traded in the first two sets, before the teams split a decisive break each in each set to take the match into the super tie-break. The ensuing match tie-break was once again a closely fought affair, before Dabrowski and Xu clinched the win to book their place first, in Sunday’s final.