CARA Black and playing partner Sania Mirza and Cara Black claimed their first title of the season in Portugal on Saturday.
The Indo-Zimbabwean pairing won the doubles final of the WTA Portugal Opair with a hard-fought 6-4 6-3 victory over Eva Hrdinova and Valeria Solovyeva.
“We’re really happy,” Black said after their summit clash on clay.
“We got to the final in Stuttgart last week and now a win here so it’s a good start on the clay for us.”
Their performance also keeps them in contention for the WTA Championships, pushing them up to no. 3 before Singapore.
“I think if you perform consistently, that kind of takes care of itself,” Mirza said about her plans to be on top of the rankings list.
“Of course the goal is to try and get there, eventually, but at the moment we’re just trying to keep improving and to play our best.”
Playing their third finals of the season, the top seeds were tested by the Czech-Russian team in the summit clash, which lasted one hour and 18 minutes.
Before Saturday Cara and Sania had ended runners-up at Indian Wells in March and at Stuttgart event, last week.
Courtesy an early break, the top seeds raced to a 3-1 lead in the opening set but Eva and Valeria raised their game by a few notches to not only break their rivals back but also snatched lead by the seventh game.
Stunned by the fight-back of the Czech-Russian pair, Sania and Cara broke Eva and Valeria in the eight game to make it 4-4 and one more time in the 10th to pocket the first set.
After trading a break each, the two pairs were 3-3 in the second set. A double fault by Cara put the top seeds down a breakpoint but they saved it to be up 4-3.
They broke the fighting rivals in the next game and Sania served out the match in the ninth game.
Sania and Cara shared euro 9,919 as prize money and earned 280 ranking points each for the win.
 
Advertisement