Recovered Sania advances to 2nd round of Australian Open
[Tue Jan 20, 2009]Being recovered from an injury, Sania is back with a bang in Australian Open. Mirza entered into second round of the tournament by defeating Marta Domachowska of Poland in two straight sets 6-1, 6-4. Sania is currently ranked at 108th position, while Marta is ranked at 61st position.
To win the first set Sania broke her opponent thrice ending the set in just 25 minutes. While in the second round, the Poland girl fought back breaking Sania twice but also did as many as 23 unforced errors. Sania took advantage of her rival's errors and won the match in a little over an hour. Sania and Marta had played with each other in 2003, where Sania had lost to Marta. Now their face-to-face record is 1-1. For the next round, Mirza will play against 10th seeded Nadia Petrova of Russia.
Sania returned to WTA singles competition after a long break. A career threatening wrist injury pushed her to stay out of court for four months. Meanwhile, coming back on the court and winning the match made Sania very happy.
"It was a great way to begin after such a long break," said Sania after the first round.
"I've not played a match in almost six months now... I'm just happy to have come through."
"I feel like I've been hitting the ball really well over the last few days but I was a bit nervous when I went on because there's a difference between being fit and being match-fit," added Sania.
Sania adds, "My wrist is holding up fine, which is good because that was my greatest concern."
"At the Olympics no-one knew what was wrong with my wrist, we didn't even know how to fix it," she said.
"So for me to be out here, and not just win but to be out here and competing, is much larger than winning right now," says the candid Sania.
Returning from Olympics she was upset and not able to hold even a fork for eating. Fortunately the cricketer Yuvraj Singh told her about a doctor, who helped her to recover the wrist without a surgery.
"I was in this mood where I thought nothing's going to work then finally I went and saw the doctor," said Sania.
With a very short period of time, the doctor helped Sania to recover from the injury. Within four days she was able to move her wrist up to 95 percent and after eight days all the scar tissue had gone.
"Two weeks later I started hitting the ball again," said Sania.
"It was a miracle," she added.
