After winning their first three tournaments together at Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston, Hingis and Mirza stormed to No.1 on the Road To Singapore doubles leaderboard, but a few mis-steps in the first few clay court tournaments they played - losing early in Stuttgart and Madrid - saw them surrender that top spot to the other breakthrough doubles team of 2015, Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Lucie Safarova.
But if they reached the final in Rome they would secure a return to that top spot, and that's exactly what they did on Saturday - the No.1-seeded Hingis and Mirza held off a late surge from No.4 seeds Caroline Garcia and Katarina Srebotnik, saving set point in the tie-break to close it out, 6-2, 7-6(5).
Hingis and Mirza are now 18-2 together since joining forces in March, a 90% winning percentage.
Awaiting them in the final will be No.3 seeds Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic, who beat No.8 seeds Alla Kudryavtseva and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the first semifinal of the day, 6-2, 6-4.
"At this stage of such a big tournament, everybody's playing really well," Mladenovic said. "We faced Alla and Anastasia already in Miami, and they're a tough team, so we definitely had a game plan."
The all-WTA Rising Star pair of Babos and Mladenovic will be going for their third WTA doubles title together, having won Dubai and Marrakech this year. They also made the Wimbledon final last year.
"We have big goals, and hopefully we can make them," Babos said. "What's important and what makes us a good team is we have fun. We help each other all the time. Hopefully we can keep going."
"Timea's my best friend and we just click on the court, so it's just working!" Mladenovic added.
Hingis and Mirza beat Babos and Mladenovic in their only previous meeting in Miami, 6-2, 6-4.
Mirza, Babos and Mladenovic are all looking to win the Internazionali BNL d'Italia for the first time, but Hingis won the doubles title in the Italian capital all the way back in 1999 with Anna Kournikova.
The Swiss WTA legend also captured the singles title twice, first in 1998 and again in 2006.
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