‘No matter where Sania goes from here she has inspired thousands of young girls to take up the sport and emulate her. At the age of 20, she is already a legend’
In February 1999, a slim, very young-looking Indian took to the courts at Lahore in her first ITF junior final. Sania Mirza, at a tender age of 12, won her first ITF junior title with Nida Waseem of Pakistan. Cut to September 2005, in her first season at competitive WTA events, Mirza reached round of 16 at the US Open, falling to Maria Sharapova. It was the first instance of an Indian woman reaching that far in a Grand Slam singles event. Before her, Nirupama Vaidyanathan reached the second round at Melbourne in 1995.

Today, ranked 30th in the world, Sania is a picture of immense confidence and an image of determination. But the rise of this lanky youngster, born in Mumbai but brought up in Hyderabad, has not come easily. She has missed out on the fun that every teenager today enjoys, sacrificed luxuries of eating out, partying and hanging out with friends in order to achieve her goal. She has crammed studies between the morning and evening sessions of practice and has emerged through an appalling system of sports management that India has.

Coming from a middle-class orthodox Muslim family of South India, Sania is the eldest daughter of Naseema and Imran Mirza. An avid tennis lover and a big admirer of Steffi Graff, her father saw early talent in Mirza and bought her a racquet and membership of a nearby small tennis academy at the tender age of six.

Over the past decade and a half, Sania has been pushing herself in order to perform at the highest level. She has spoken of waking up at five in morning and taking a shot at breakfast aboard the car which takes her to the practice courts. Coming back to attend college, she returns for an evening practice session before finding time to complete her studies, then doing some warm-down exercises and finally collapsing into bed. That’s the daily routine Sania has followed from the time she took to the sport seriously.

All this hard work and toiling has put her in the current top 30 of women’s tennis. So we can only imagine what players like Maria Sharapova or Justine Henin goes through to be on top of the world. As I understand it, Sharapova was apart from her mother for six lomng years while honing her talents in the USA. That’s the kind of sacrifice top-notch players have to make.

Never missing out on the religious aspect, Sania prays (offers namaaz) five times a day like a true Muslim, showing that she has matched her talents with family values in order to achieve success. She has admitted that prayer is a great tonic for her to refresh and strengthen her mental capabilities, which  helps her to win through tight situations.

Although on the WTA tour over the past couple of years, she has not done anything extraordinary like a Hingis or a Sharapova, it’s no mean achievement to be in the top 30 when you think where she has come from. Hailing from a nation mad about cricket, Sania has defied odds by not only making a niche for herself, but overpowering some of her cricketing counterparts in terms of popularity. Before her, no Indian women’s tennis player has ever come close to breaking into the top 100.

But more than that, being a Muslim girl from a religious background, Sania has set an example to show that if you have dedication and a will to succeed then there can be no hindrances in achieving your goals. After the success she has achieved, many parents are sending their kids to tennis academies and coaching schools that have cropped up all over the nation. She now enjoys a status of stardom and is mobbed wherever she goes, especially back home in India. In a nation where sports apart from cricket are more or less neglected and where women athletes have struggled to attain support of respective federations and states, Sania has lead a revolution which is taking the Indian sport to a new level.

So what is so special in her that makes Sania a player to look out for, whenever she takes to the courts? It’s not that she has reached the top in a hurry like a Hingis, Capriati or Sharapova for that matter, neither has she won a lot of tour events (just one WTA tour title at Hyderabad). But she has the persona to attract people to her matches – an attitude that oozes confidence in whatever she does and a will to succeed even under trying circumstances and amid a substandard grass roots system.

It’s not that the results do not show the kind of player she is. In her first season on tour she accounted for Svetlana Kuznetsova at an event in Dubai when the Russian was reigning US Open champion. Later on she put it across another Russian, as Nadia Petrova had no answer to her ground strokes. Apart from winning the Hyderabad Open in 2005, Sania has 12 ITF titles in her kitty and has defeated nine players ranked in the top 20 since her arrival on the tour, including two consecutive wins over the former world number one from Switzerland, Martina Hingis.

In the current US Open series of events her win/loss record is tremendous and she has the third best record after Sharapova and Anna Chakvetadze. She has reached the quarters, semis and finals of at least one tournament on the hard courts of US this year, climbing from 38th to 30th in a space of three weeks.

What really sets Sania apart is her determination to fight back from great lows. She had a back and side strain during the second part of last season which lead her to lose matches as well as miss out on a few important tournaments. Conceding precious WTA points, her rankings dip from 31 in January last year to 66 at the end of the season. After a decent start to 2007 in Australia, Sania fell victim to a more serious knee sprain, which needed surgery in March, taking her away from competitive action for more than eight weeks.

She was determined to return to the tour as soon as possible and, while the knee surgery did not permit her to put strain on her lower limbs, she started rigorous upper body exercises in order to get back in shape. Many experts during her recovery period claimed Sania was a one-year wonder and that she had achieved her best. What these people should understand is that this Indian prodigy is just a 20-year-old baby on the tour, and that whatever she has achieved is already more than what she had planned for. So, instead of writing her off, just admire the way she has blown away higher-ranked opponents over the past few weeks.

As she has come back from injury, fitter, slimmer and more athletic, it is quite certain that in the years to come Sania can achieve higher targets and achieve her goal of becoming one of the best in the game.

Finally, no matter where Sania goes from here, she has redefined and ignited new life in a glamour sport for a nation which has seen no success at all in women’s tennis. She has inspired thousands of young girls to take up the sport and emulate her. At such a young age, she is already a legend in Indian sport.