Sania Wins Against Voegele; Goes Down After a Tough Fight In Doubles

It all became all the more evident today that If Sania loses her serve, she loses almost every part of her game. Well, it has been noticed since Wimbledon that she has been working on her serve, adding more jump before striking the ball, to get more more pace on her serve.

It is often said that in Tennis, to bring any change to your technique and make it effective, you need at least 6 to 9 months of practice and match-play. And since a player is concentrating more on improving that part of his / her game, he often fails to pay more attention to other parts of the game. Also, if he / she fails to get that new part of his / her game right, he / she ends up paying more attention to that new addition and ends up playing only a mediocre level of Tennis overall.

This is what I believe, has been happening with Sania eve since Wimbledon 2009. That being that, I am happy that Sania at least managed to win today against Stefanie Voegele, albeit barely.

In a tight 3-setter, Sania overcame tough Swiss girl 57, 61, 75. She managed to put in only 49% of her 1st serves in. Well, essentially both girls were serving poorly, but Sania was worse than her swiss opponent.

One thing that Sania has great are her returns, which have only gone better with times. She managed to get 17 break points throughout the match and converted 9 of them. That's a very good 59% of break-point conversion rate. When it came to her own serve, Voegele broke Sania 6 out of 10 times in the match.

I remember that once Sania's dad, Mr. Imran Mirza said that When she loses the first set, She comes back like a wounded tigress. That is actually very true of her character, I have personally noted that in so many of her matches; it happened today as well.

Now moving over to her 2nd round match, Sania has a much tougher task at hand which requires all parts of her game, including her serve to go on firing. Her next opponent is tournament's 4th seed and her good friend Francesca Schiavone. Their head-to-head record goes 3-0 in the Italian's favour, with first two of the three matches being tight 3-setters, last one being in Osaka last year, where Schiavone managed to almost blank out Sania 62, 61. But hey! Past is past, We all know Sania will play without those matches in mind; she has always played like that.

A little about Sania's doubles match partnering Virginia Ruano-Pascual : Well, I had already said this that Cibulkova / Wickmayer team is gonna be a cracker of a team; both the players are former top 20 singles girls, itching to get that spot back. And indeed they were a cracker of a combination against Sania / Virginia. The Slovak-Belgian pair managed to win 61, 76(8-6). The scoreline itself says how competitive 2nd set was. (pictured other girl is Bethaie Mattek, sorry I didn't get any pic of Sania and Virginia playing together)

In Doubles, when at 40-40, its a sudden death point i.e whoever wins the next point, wins the game; 40-40 in not deuce anymore (except in Grand Slams). When Cibulkova / Wickmayer served at 40-40 at 6-5 in the second set, it was a very entertaining point in terms of score; it was BOTH a match point for serving team and a break point to the returning team. The aim of WTA Tour to include this sudden death point in Doubles seems to be working very well; it adds the element of fun to Doubles and will surely attract more spectators to these matches.

Now all being said and done, I am happy that Sania is free of doubles this week. I have always being saying that She needs to control to limit her doubles, coz her body is fragile and injury-prone. For now, let's wish her all the best for her next match against Schiavone, which starts around 7 am tomorrow morning (IST)..I want REVENGE..!!!