Sania Mirza: 20 of the Indian trailblazer's most incredible career achievements

For Sania Mirza, Dubai is the right place to call it a career.

“I knew from last year that I was going to stop soon, and I’m just really excited to be back in Dubai and to end it here,” she told media over the weekend. “Eighteen years ago a lot of amazing things started for me here, as scary as that sounds—it was in 2005 when I first played here, and I remember beating Kuznetsova. It was a long time ago.

“I couldn’t think of a better place to finish my career.”

It’s where she now lives, too.

“Dubai’s been my home away from home for the longest time, but now it’s actually my home. So it’s always great to be back here, playing here with the crowd. I always get such a warm welcome from everybody in the tournament, so I’m really excited to be here.”

In the last tournament of her career, Mirza is playing alongside American Madison Keys—they’ll face Veronika Kudermetova and Liudmila Samsonova in the first round on Tuesday.

It’s been 20 years since Mirza played the first WTA tournament of her career in Hyderabad, India in February 2003—and to celebrate, here are 20 of her most incredible career achievements:

She was the first Indian woman to win a WTA title of any kind. She achieved that feat as a 17-year-old in Hyderabad in 2004, winning the doubles title there alongside fellow future No. 1 Liezel Huber.

She then became the first Indian woman to win a WTA singles title. A year after winning the doubles in Hyderabad, she won the singles. As an 18-year-old, No. 134-ranked wild card, she beat three seeds—Zheng Jie, Maria Kirilenko and Alona Bondarenko—en route to the title.

She was the first Indian woman to reach the third round of a major. Right before winning that singles title in Hyderabad, she made the third round of the 2005 Australian Open as a No. 166-ranked wild card, falling to eventual champion Serena Williams, 6-1, 6-4. “I think she has a very solid game, especially to be so young; she’s only 18,” Serena said. “I definitely see a very bright future for her.”

She became the first Indian woman to reach the fourth round of a major, too. She made it to the fourth round of the 2005 US Open, beating Marion Bartoli en route, falling to Maria Sharapova.

Her singles career included another three WTA finals, seven more WTA semifinals and 13 more WTA quarterfinals. Her biggest final came in 2007 at Stanford, a "Tier II" event at the time (which would be a WTA 500 today). She finished runner-up to Anna Chakvetadze.

She got her first Top 10 win as an 18-year-old in Dubai in 2005. She stunned then-No. 7 Svetlana Kuznetsova in the second round, 6-4, 6-2, before falling to Jelena Jankovic in the quarterfinals.

She would soon become the first Indian woman to reach the Top 50 on the WTA rankings. She broke into the Top 50 in 2005, but she didn’t stop there, reaching a career-high of No. 27 in 2007.

She would amass three Top 10 wins and another eight Top 20 wins in her singles career. In addition to her aforementioned victory over Kuznetsova, she also defeated a No. 9-ranked Nadia Petrova in San Diego in 2005, and a No. 8-ranked Martina Hingis in Seoul in 2006.

In 2008, she became the first Indian woman to surpass $1 Million in career prize money. She’s now at $7,261,296 coming into Dubai.

In 2009, she became the first Indian woman to win a Grand Slam title of any kind. She captured the Australian Open mixed doubles title that year alongside countryman Mahesh Bhupathi.

Mirza played her last singles event at Eastbourne in 2012, shifting her focus to doubles only from there—and the records kept coming:

She became the first Indian woman to win a WTA Finals title in 2014. She won the doubles title with Cara Black, beating Hsieh Su-Wei and Peng Shuai in the final, 6-1, 6-0, which is actually the most lopsided doubles final in the 50-year history of the WTA Finals (1973 to 2022).

She won the Sunshine Double with Hingis in 2015. Indian Wells and Miami were actually the first two tournaments Mirza and Hingis even played together. They also won the third tournament they played together right after that, in Charleston on green clay.

On April 13th, 2015, after winning Charleston, she rose to No. 1 on the WTA doubles rankings. She was the first (and still only) Indian woman to reach No. 1 in either singles or doubles.

She became the first Indian woman to win a Grand Slam women’s doubles title at Wimbledon in 2015. It was just the second major she and Hingis had played together, after Roland Garros.

Between 2015 and 2016, Mirza and Hingis went on a 41-match winning streak, the longest WTA doubles winning streak since Jana Novotna and Helena Sukova won 44 in a row in 1990. The Indian-Swiss duo’s run brought them nine consecutive titles—the US Open, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Beijing and the WTA Finals in 2015, then Brisbane, Sydney, the Australian Open and St. Petersburg in 2016.

She would end up with six Grand Slam titles in all—at least one at every major. She won three of them in women’s doubles (all with Hingis, at Wimbledon and the US Open in 2015 and the Australian Open in 2016) and the other three in mixed doubles (the first two with Bhupathi, at the 2009 Australian Open and 2012 Roland Garros, and the third with Brazil's Bruno Soares at the 2014 US Open).

She amassed 91 career weeks at No. 1. It’s the eighth-most weeks at No. 1 in WTA doubles rankings history, after Martina Navratilova (237), Huber (199), Black (163), Lisa Raymond (137), Natasha Zvereva (124), Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario (111) and Roberta Vinci (110).

She was a four-time Olympian. Beijing in 2008, London in 2012, Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and Tokyo in 2021. Her best result was reaching the bronze medal match in mixed doubles in Rio in 2016 alongside Rohan Bopanna (falling to Lucie Hradecka and Radek Stepanek).

After having her first child in 2018, she made a strong comeback as a mom-on-tour. Upon coming back she won two more WTA doubles titles to bring her career haul to 43, including a WTA 500 in Ostrava in 2021 with Zhang Shuai. She worked her way back up to No. 22 in 2022.

And she just reached her 12th Grand Slam final a few weeks ago. Unseeded, Mirza and Bopanna reached the final of the 2023 Australian Open mixed doubles event, taking out No. 3 seeds and two-time defending Wimbledon champions Desirae Krawczyk and Neal Skupski in the semifinals before finishing runner-up to another unseeded team, Brazilian duo Luisa Stefani and Rafael Matos.

“I never thought I would be able to play in front of my child in a Grand Slam final,” Mirza said at an emotional post-match ceremony. “It’s truly special for me to have my four-year-old here.”