Indian tennis legend Sania Mirza bid farewell to the sport at the WTA1000 event in Dubai on February 21, 2023. The 36-year-old achieved unprecedented success in a career that spanned a little over two decades.
Here’s the year-by-year summary of the glorious career of Sania Mirza:
1999 - A 13-year-old Sania Mirza makes her debut on the ITF junior circuit at the Pakistan International Junior Championship, finishing runner-up in singles and winning doubles title with local player Nida Waseem.
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2000 - Wins 1st singles title on the ITF junior circuit in September in Mumbai.
2001 - Makes her ITF senior debut in Chandigarh. Later in the year, plays her first-ever Junior Grand Slam at Wimbledon, losing in first and second rounds in doubles and singles, respectively.
2002 - Wins three consecutive ITF 10k USD singles titles; mixed doubles bronze medal at Busan Asian Games with Leander Paes and junior Asian singles title.
2003 - Makes WTA debut as a wildcard in Hyderabad; becomes first Indian girl to win a title at Junior Grand Slam (doubles with Russian Alisa Kleybanova at Wimbledon).
FROM THE ARCHIVES - Sania Mirza: One last fling at the junior level
2004 - Wins first WTA doubles title at Hyderabad with USA’s Liezel Huber (first Indian ever to win a WTA title of any kind); six singles titles and two doubles titles on ITF Circuit. Also, makes her Grand Slam debut in any category (lost in qualifying round of women’s doubles at Wimbledon).
Sania Mirza poses with the winner’s trophy after beating Ukraine’s Alyona Bondarenko in the final of the WTA Hyderabad Open at the SAAP Tennis Complex in Hyderabad on February 12, 2005. She became the first Indian woman to win a WTA tour event. | Photo Credit: P. V. Sivakumar/The Hindu
2005 - Makes her Grand Slam main draw debut at Australian Open (lost to Serena Williams in third round); wins first WTA singles title in Hyderabad; achieves best singles result for an Indian woman at a Grand Slam (lost to Maria Sharapova in US Open 4th round); becomes first Indian woman to enter Top 50 (finishes the year as World No.31); named WTA Newcomer of the Year.
2006 - Wins WTA doubles titles with Huber in Bangalore and Kolkata; clinches gold in mixed doubles (with Leander Paes) and silver in singles and team events at 2006 Doha Asian Games.
READ - Sania Mirza: A peerless legend leaves a lasting legacy
2007 - Undergoes surgery for right knee injury; enters the US Open as World No.27 (career-high); wins four WTA doubles titles (with USA’s Vania King in Morocco, USA’s Bethanie Mattek-Sands in Cincinnati, Israel’s Shahar Peer in Stanford and Italy’s Mara Santangelo in New Haven); right wrist injury and abdominal strain issues later in season.
2008 - Reaches first-ever Grand Slam final (partnering Mahesh Bhupathi, lost the Australian Open mixed doubles final 6-7(4), 4-6 to Serbia’s Nenad Zimonjic and China’s Tian-Tian Sun); becomes first Indian woman ever to surpass 1 million USD in career prize money.
India’s Sania Mirza (left) and Mahesh Bhupathi hold the winner’s trophy after beating France’s Nathalie Dechy and Israel’s Andy Ram in the Mixed doubles final at the Australian Open in Melbourne on Feb. 1, 2009. | Photo Credit: AP
2009 - Wins first Grand Slam title in mixed doubles at Australian Open with Mahesh Bhupathi; finishes runner-up in singles at WTA event in Pattaya; clinches WTA doubles title at Ponte Vedra Beach with Chia-Jung Chuang of Chinese Taipei.
2010 - Out for four months from February to June with right wrist injury and drops out of top 100 in singles; wins one WTA doubles title in Guangzhou with Edina Gallovits-Hall of the US; wins silver medal in singles and bronze in women’s doubles at Commonwealth Games in New Delhi; bronze medallist in singles and silver medallist in mixed doubles with Vishnu Vardhan at Guangzhou Asian Games.
2011 - Wins WTA doubles title in Indian Wells and Charleston (with Elena Vesnina of Russia), and Washington (with Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan); reaches first Grand Slam women’s doubles final with Vesnina (lost to Czech pair of Andrea Sestini Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka); makes WTA Top 10 debut in doubles on September 12; finishes year as World No.88 in singles.
FROM THE ARCHIVES - Not over yet: Sania
2012 - Makes final appearance in a Grand Slam singles match (lost to Bulgaria’s Tsvetana Pironkova in first round) and last singles event at Eastbourne in June; wins second Grand Slam mixed doubles title with Mahesh Bhupathi at French Open; clinches two WTA doubles titles in Pattaya (with Australia’s Anastasia Rodionova) and Brussels (with Mattek-Sands).
2013 - First season exclusively as a doubles player; wins WTA titles in Brisbane, Dubai (with Mattek-Sands), New Haven (with China’s Jie Zheng), Tokyo and Beijing (with Zimbabwe’s Cara Black); finishes the year as World No.9 in doubles.
2014 - Wins WTA titles in Oeiras, Tokyo and WTA Finals (with Black); finishes runner-up in mixed doubles at Australian Open (with Romania’s Horia Tecau) and champion at US Open (with Brazil’s Bruno Soares), grabs mixed doubles gold (with Saketh Myneni) and women’s doubles bronze (with Prarthana Thombare) at Incheon Asian Games; World No.6 in doubles at the end of the year.
2015 - Wins WTA titles in Sydney (with Mattek-Sands), Indian Wells, Miami, Charleston, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Beijing and WTA Finals along with women’s doubles crowns at Wimbledon and US Open (all with Switzerland’s Martina Hingis); becomes first Indian woman to rise to No.1, singles or doubles (On April 13 after Charleston).
2016 - Wins WTA titles in Brisbane, Sydney, St. Petersburg, Rome, Cincinnati, New Haven, along with Australian Open (all with Hingis) and Tokyo (with Czech Republic’s Barbora Strycova) recording an unbeaten streak of 41 matches which started in 2015; runner-up in mixed doubles at French Open with Croatia’s Ivan Dodig (lost to Paes and Hingis), 4th-place finish in mixed doubles at Rio Olympics with Rohan Bopanna (lost to Czech Republic’s Radek Stepanek and Hradecka in bronze medal match); finishes year as World No.1 in doubles.
2017 - Wins one WTA doubles title in Brisbane (with Mattek-Sands); runner-up at Australian Open in mixed doubles with Dodig (lost to Juan-Sebastian Cabal of Colombia and Abigail Spears of the US).
2020 - Plays at WTA250 event in Hobart, her first event since giving birth to son Izhaan, and wins title with Ukraine’s Nadiia Kichenok.
2021 - Wins 43rd and final WTA doubles title of her career in Ostrava (with China’s Zhang Shuai); makes last appearance as Olympics (partnering Ankita Raina, lost to Nadiia and Lyudmyla Kichenok of Ukraine in first round of women’s doubles in Tokyo).
2022 - Runner-up finish at WTA events in Charleston and Strasbourg (with Hradecka); ends season midway after a tendon injury in her forearm.
2023 - Runner-up with Bopanna in mixed doubles at her final Grand Slam - Australian Open (lost to Brazil’s Rafael Matos and Luisa Stefani); plays final professional match at WTA1000 event in Dubai (partnering USA’s Madison Keys, lost to Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova and Liudmila Samsonova in first round).
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