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By Alex Perry
Posted Monday, October 3, 2005; 21:00 HKT
When tennis' latest star made the third round of the U.S. Open last month, she showed up at a post-match press conference in a T-shirt that read: "I'm cute? No shit." That—and her court play—certainly got her noticed. Suddenly, India's Sania Mirza was the tournament's "most popular player" (Reuters), whose "racket bag was sagging with the weight of a country's expectations" (New York Times). "Her diamond-studded nose ring" was one clue Mirza was not "your typical teenage prodigy," wrote USA Today, which also spotlighted her "smashmouth ground strokes and go-for-broke style."
When it comes to sport and religion, both India and Islam are conservative. To many in Mirza's hometown, the Muslim fort city of Hyderabad in southern India, the idea of a sports star who is not a male cricketer is extraordinary enough, let alone the sight of an 18-year-old Muslim girl with a socking forehand in a cheeky top. "People have been kind of taken by surprise," laughs Mirza.
Indeed, several hard-line Islamic clerics have issued fatwas censuring Mirza and demanding she dress more modestly. But most Indians, including ordinary Muslims, seem less focused on what Mirza wears than how she plays. Since the U.S. Open, where she eventually made the last 16 before losing to No. 1 seed Maria Sharapova, Sania mania has swept through India. Posters and pictures of her outsell Bollywood superstars, she's feted by her government and on MTV, and last week Hyundai made her the brand ambassador for its Getz model. Her sassiness—on another T-shirt during Wimbledon, she proclaimed: "Well-behaved women rarely make history"—has made her a symbol of independence to Indian women.
Mirza might easily have missed her destiny. If there had been a sport in her future, it was cricket. "My dad used to play for his university, and I'd go to his sports club to watch him and muck around," she says. "But on the way, we'd pass the tennis courts. One day when I was around six, I said to Dad, 'Maybe I'd like that.' And then I started." After playing local tournaments for a few years, Mirza and father Imran "got serious" and took up tennis full-time—she playing, he coaching. At 15, she won a bronze medal in the mixed doubles at the Asian Games in South Korea with countryman Leander Paes. At 16, she won the women's junior doubles at Wimbledon alongside Russian Alisa Kleybanova.
But it's her singles game that has truly taken off in the last 12 months. A series of stunning performances has pushed her world ranking from 326 to 37, which means she has risen faster and further than any other player this year—male or female. Besides the last 16 of the U.S. Open, she won her first WTA title on home ground in Hyderabad in February, and made the final of the Forest Hills Classic in New York in August. "Her best tennis is incredible," said U.S. Open victor Kim Clijsters during a press conference. "She's probably hitting the ball a lot harder and cleaner than a lot of the top girls." Unbecoming, perhaps, for a traditional Indian Muslim girl. But cute, in a way.
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