Dubai: India’s Sania Mirza and her doubles partner Barbora Strycova are relishing another shot at Abigail Spears and Katarina Srebotnik in the women’s doubles quarter-finals at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Thursday.
Mirza and Strycova fell to eventual champions Spears and Srebotnik in the semi-finals in Doha last week, 6-3, 6-1, 10-8, and the 30-year-old from Mumbai is now eyeing quick revenge in a place where she has enjoyed doubles delight with one win (2013) in nine previous appearances in Dubai.
“It will be nice to go out and have another shot at it,” she said. “We were really close last week and it would be nice to play them again. It will be tough because they obviously won, and will be very confident. Every time you win a tournament you come into the next week feeling really confident because everything is going your way, but hopefully we can win. I’m looking forward to it.”
Third seeds Mirza and Strycova overcame Kiki Bertens and Johanna Larsson 6-3, 7-5 in Wednesday’s last 16.
“It was a good day at the office, we played well and we are happy to come through in straight sets,” added Mirza.
“We shouldn’t be going 7-5 in the second set though, I think we played solid in the first set but our serve needed to be better in the second. We’ve got another tough game tomorrow now, so our serve needs to improve.”
Of a vocal Indian expatriate crowd backing her in Dubai, she said: “It’s really good, when we walked on, Johanna [Larsson] said: ‘Are we in India?’
“We were joking, but I’ve always had great support in Dubai, it’s a home away from home for me and my husband [Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik] as we live here off and on. So, it’s like home and it’s the closest thing to playing at home seeing as we don’t have a WTA event in India.”
Mirza and Strycova’s quarter-final opponents Spears and Srebotnik — who are seventh seeds in Dubai — came through their last 16 on Wednesday with a 6-4, 6-3 win over Raluca Olaru and Olga Savchuk.
In Wednesday’s other last 16 matches, top seeds Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic beat Viktorija Golubic and Kristyna Pliskova 7-5, 4-6, 10-5.
They will now play fifth seeds Hao-Ching Chan and Yaroslava Shvedova in the quarter-finals after the latter beat Irina-Camelia Begu and Daria Kasatkina 6-3, 6-3.
Sixth seeds Andrea Hlavackova and Shuai Peng beat Mandy Minella and Anastasija Sevastova 7-5, 6-2, to set up a quarter-final showdown with fourth seeds Martina Hingis and Yung-Jan Chan.
And in the last quarter, second seeds Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina will play Gabriela Dabrowski and Jelena Ostapenko, both of whom, like Hingis and Yung-Jan, came through their last 16 tests unscathed on Tuesday.
