Swiss veteran Martina Hingis and India’s Sania Mirza crowned a stunning year for their partnership on Sunday by winning their ninth title at the WTA Finals in Singapore.
The duo, crowned the best doubles team of the year on Saturday, thrashed the Spanish pair of Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro to clinch the WTA Finals women’s doubles trophy.
The top seeds, who joined forces only in March, beat Spain’s eighth seeds Garbine Muguruza and Carla Suarez Navarro 6-0, 6-3 in 66 minutes, much of which looked more like an exhibition match than a season finale. The lopsided summit clash sealed the utter domination of the Indo-Swiss pair on court this year.
Before this, Sania and Martina had won eight titles (Indian Wells, Miami, Charleston, Wimbledon, US Open, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Beijing) and finished runner-up just once (Rome – falling to WTA Rising Stars Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic).
The Indo-Swiss pairing dropped serve only once through the match and broke their opponents five times to wrap up a comprehensive victory.
Sania and Martina are now unbeaten in 22 matches, stretching back six tournaments. In fact, since their last defeat — to Chan Hao-Ching and Chan Yung-Jan in Cincinnati — they have dropped just two sets.
Muguruza and Suarez Navarro — late replacements in the draw after Casey Dellacqua and Yaroslava Shvedova’s withdrawal — were completely outplayed in the match.
In the second game, Sania unleashed a ferocious forehand to break Muguruza.
The second set was more competitive, but Sania and Martina did not let go of their supremacy and wrapped up after little over an hour on court.
“I feel like it was a perfect day,” Hingis said. “Sania just played out of her mind – she was everywhere today, getting everything back and playing incredible tennis.”
Mirza said “everything, on court, off court” is working for the pair, who end the year as the world number one women’s doubles team.
“These are the moments we’ve worked all our lives for and we feel very fortunate together. We’ve done some amazing things this year so it’s a perfect way to, you know, end the year for us,” she added.
This triumph is especially huge for Martina as the trophy was her 50th WTA doubles title, a milestone only 15 players have reached (Martina Navratilova, Rosie Casals, Pam Shriver, Billie Jean King, Natasha Zvereva, Lisa Raymond, Jana Novotna, Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, Gigi Fernandez, Helena Sukova, Larisa Neiland, Cara Black, Rennae Stubbs, Wendy Turnbull and Liezel
Huber).