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SINGAPORE - Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza powered past a dangerous sister act to reach their 10th final of the year together at the BNP Paribas WTA Finals Singapore presented by SC Global.
Watch highlights, interviews and much more video from Singapore right here on wtatennis.com!
Facing Chan Hao-Ching and Chan Yung-Jan, Hingis and Mirza went in on a monster 20-match winning streak - but their last loss actually came to the same sister act, in the semifinals of Cincinnati.
But they'd beaten them back three times since then, and they kept that pattern going this time as well, the No.3-seeded Taiwanese pair going up 3-1 in the first set but the No.1-seeded Swiss-Indian duo reeling off 11 of the next 14 games to completely run away with the match, closing it out, 6-4, 6-2.
"On the court I feel very fortunate to have Sania on my side because she's an incredibly positive person," Hingis said. "When I get myself down, I'm not really a morning person, so she was out there and kept fighting and kept keeping me up there. That's why we were able to come back in the first set.
"Once I felt better, that's when everything started to click. They're a great team, so they've always come out strong in the past six matches that we played them. And they know how to play against us."
"We came out with a strategy against them," Mirza said. "It's very different to what we played against players like yesterday who have more power, different strategy. We kind of have to stick to our guns, stick to what we have planned. We have to trust our abilities. That's what really takes us through a lot of the times, is that trust in each other's ability. We know sooner or later we're going to break.
"It happened at 3-2. If it didn't happen there, we would still keep fighting to make it happen."
Hingis and Mirza are now through to their 10th final of the year together, winning eight titles (Indian Wells, Miami, Charleston, Wimbledon, US Open, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Beijing) and finishing runner-up just one time (Rome - falling to WTA Rising Stars Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic).
This is a particularly big opportunity for Hingis - she's a win away from her 50th WTA doubles title, a milestone only 15 players have reached (Martina Navratilova, Rosie Casals, Pam Shriver, Billie Jean King, Natasha Zvereva, Lisa Raymond, Jana Novotna, Arantxa Sánchez-Vicario, Gigi Fernández,Helena Sukova, Larisa Neiland, Cara Black, Rennae Stubbs, Wendy Turnbull and Liezel Huber).
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