WTA Finals: Mirza-Hingis win 2nd match, on course for semis berth

IANS
SINGAPORE, OCTOBER 30

Top seeds Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis won their second match in a row to virtually seal their semi-finals spot in the season-ending $7 million WTA Finals in Singapore on Wednesday.
Following their straight sets victory in the opening match of the red group of the round-robin stage on Monday, the Indo-Swiss duo came up with another brilliant performance to beat Czech seventh seeds Andrea Hlavácková and Lucie Hradecká 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and 17 minutes.Playing on hard courts, Mirza, who won the prestigious tournament last year with Zimbabwe’s Cara Black, and Hingis got off to a perfect start by first holding their serve and then breaking the Czechs in only the second game of the match. They again broke Hlavácková and Hradecká in the sixth game of the first set to take a 5-1 lead. Serving for the set, the reigning Wimbledon and US Open champions were, however, broken by the seventh seeds in the seventh game. The Czech girls also went on to hold their serve in the next game. But at 5-3, Mirza and Hingis, the world’s top two women’s doubles players, only needed a couple of minutes to pocket the set and take the lead in the match.
Like the first set, the Indo-Swiss team was broken once in the second set. But Mirza and Hingis were just too good, breaking the Czech team’s serve twice more to easily pocket the contest. The top seeds were superb when it came to break point conversions, winning four of the five chances made available to them.
Mirza and Hingis, the only pair in their group to have not lost a set, will take on Hungarian-French fourth seeds Tímea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic in their final round-robin match on Friday before the knockouts.
The WTA Finals is an annual event played by the top eight players/pairs of the year who are divided into two round robin groups — red and white. The top two teams of each group progress to the semi-finals and then to the finals.
The championship is generally considered the fifth most prestigious event on the women’s tour after the four Grand Slam tournaments. It also has the largest prize money and ranking points after the Grand Slams.