The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Sania raring to go

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Friday, Jan 21, 2005

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Sport - Tennis

Sania raring to go

By Nirmal Shekar

MELBOURNE, JAN. 20. When a sportsperson says, "Oh, no, I don't give out my mobile number,'' you immediately know that he/she has arrived.

Sania Mirza's "arrival" was announced loud and clear with those words of her own at a small interview room in the media centre in Melbourne Park on Wednesday when a sportswriter asked for her number, not long after she became the first Indian woman to make it to the third round of a Grand Slam singles event.

Since then, Mirza has perhaps spent twice or thrice as much time on the phone as she did on the court on Wednesday (50 minutes) as the television and print media from India — not to speak of friends and relatives — have sought her out in her moment of glory. How well all this instant celebrity sits on her we'll know in the months to come.

Big act

But, today, the rehearsal for the big act on the centre stage was held in the outback. On the eve of the biggest day of her career — a day when she would take on Serena Williams in a third round match of the Centenary Australian Open — Mizra practised on court No. 20, watched by two chirpy girls who were rather more keen on the fish and chips they had unpacked and one old woman who asked every passer-by who the two women on court were.

The court, hardly about 75 metres from the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), across a busy railtrack, was as far away from a show court, physically and metaphorically, as was possible. But after a heady 48 hours in which she shot from "that Indian wildcard" to a minor celebrity, Mirza could do with a little anonymity.

Poise

Playing Serena Williams at the Vodofone Arena in a third round match on her Grand Slam debut might have been beyond her wildest fantasies less than a week ago but Mirza has dealt with the unfolding reality of her `Cinderella Run' with commendable poise and maturity. Her lack of experience in dealing with the international media shows sometimes as she appears a touch unpolished at press conferences. But, then, this is only her first Slam and time, as well as the experience that comes with it, should take care of that.

On Friday, it should help Mirza that she is playing Serena when the former World champion is not really on top of her game. Serena is certainly not the player she was when she won the title here two years ago. And the Indian teenager says that she feels no pressure at all.

"I have nothing to lose. I am just going to go out there and play my natural game. All the pressure is on her,'' says Mirza, who is already assured of $(Aus) 46,250 in prize money. "Playing on a show court for the first time, it should be fun.''

Yet, however well Serena plays, it would still be a notch or two above anything that Mirza has had to deal with so far in her career, which will surely receive a major boost after this week when her ranking (166) is expected to go up more than 30 places.

In her two matches here, Mirza has shown that she quite likes it when the opponent hits with a lot of pace. Then again, the jump from yesterday to tomorrow — in terms of pace and power — could well be the sort of graduation that the Hyderabad teenager is still unfamiliar with.

But given her appetite for the unfamiliar, Friday's contest — the highest profile tennis match that any Indian woman might have ever featured in — is not entirely without possibilities for Mirza, who will leave Melbourne with a lot of positives, in terms of both her near and long term future, no matter what happens tomorrow.

Serena Williams versus Sania Mirza is the third match at the Vodofone Arena. The first beings at 5.30 a.m. IST.

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