By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Friday January 6, 2022
Indian trailblazer Sania Mirza – a six-time Grand Slam champion with three titles in doubles and three in mixed and a former World No.1 – has announced that she will retire at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships next month.
Mirza, who had planned to hang up the racquet in 2022, changed her decision when she was forced to cut her season short due to an elbow injury.
Mirza was a force on the singles court as well, where she won a title and reached No.43 in the world, but her biggest successes came on the doubles court. She was part of the WTA’s doubles team of the year in 2015, when she and Martina Hingis dominated the tour and carried out a 44-match winning streak.
She won 43 doubles titles and spent 91 weeks at No.1.
Mirza was also named in Time magazine's 2016 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
“I’m 36, and honestly my body is beat, that is the main reason for it,” Mirza said, according to WTATennis and Curry Tales Middle East. “And I really don’t have the capacity in my mind to emotionally push that much anymore. I turned pro in 2003. Priorities change, and now my priority is not to push my body to the limit every single day.”