New York: Sania Mirza reached her first Grand Slam (GS) semifinal of the 2017 season with Shuai Peng after edging past Timea Babos and Andrea Hlavackova in a close two-set battle at the US Open, here Thursday.
The fourth seeded Indo-Chinese pair dispatched the fifth seed Hungarian-Czech combo 7-6(7-5), 6-4 in the quarterfinal which lasted 116 minutes.
It is season’s best performance for Sania at the Majors as she fell in the third rounds of the Australian Open and Wimbledon while at the French Open she had made a first round exit.
Sania and Peng now face second seeds Martina Hingis and Yung-Jan Chan. At Wimbledon Sania and her Belgian partner Kirsten Flipkens had lost to the same pair.
Sania has played with different partners at the Grand Slams this season and the results had not been satisfactory. At the Australian Open she had teamed up with Barbora Strycova and at the French Open it was Yaroslava Shvedova.
This season Sania has managed to win only one title – the Brisbane WTA event with American Bethanie Mattek-Sands.
This is in complete contrast to her stupendous show in 2016, in which she won eight titles, including five with Hingis. She had ended 2016 as No.1 but has now slipped to No.9 as she has struggled to find a consistent partner after splitting with Hingis.
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