Sania Mirza’s glittering playing career came to a close on Tuesday in Dubai after an opening-round defeat.
Mirza was playing women’s doubles with Madison Keys in her final professional event. They went down 4-6, 0-6 against Veronika Kudermetova and Liudmila Samsonova.
Mirza had played her last Grand Slam at the Australian Open last month, and ended with a runner-up finish in mixed doubles along with Rohan Bopanna.
Mirza had actually said that 2022 would be her final season but an injury meant she couldn’t participate at the US Open as originally planned. “When I made that decision, I had not spoken about it to anybody at home. So everybody was very surprised. When I came out, they were like, ‘oh, you said it in the press conference.’ I was like, ‘yeah, I felt it,’” she said in an interview with Scroll.
“And that’s the person that I am, I like to do things on my own terms. For me at that point, I said ‘this is going to be my last season’, which was to be the entire year, but I could only play till mid-August because I hurt my elbow. For me it was just not acceptable to stop playing tennis because of an injury. It was not something I was okay to do because that’s the person I am, it goes deep into my roots as to where I want to do things because I want do them, not because somebody is telling me or something is forcing me to do it.”
Over the course of her career, she won six Grand Slam doubles titles, in a total of 43 WTA doubles titles and one singles trophy. The 36-year-old Sania, who turned Pro in 2003, became the world No 1 during her doubles run with Martina Hingis.
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