By IANS,
Dubai : India’s Sania Mirza crashed out of the first round of the $2 million Dubai Tennis Championships with a 3-6, 4-6 loss to Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues here Monday.
This was Sania’s fourth straight first-round loss, meeting similar fate at Hobart, the Australian Open and last week at Pattaya Open.
Sania was also treated during the match for her troublesome right wrist that kept her off the circuit for the most part of 2008.
The two players exchanged breaks twice in the first set before World No. 33 Anabel held her serve in the fifth game to go up 3-2. Sania too held hers albeit with a struggle before Anabel reeled off three games to be a set-up.
In the second set, Sania was broken thrice to lose the match in one hour and 35 minutes.
The 77th-ranked Hyderabadi was quoted as saying her painful wrist played on her mind during the match.
“I think a lot is mental,” Sania said. “You know, when something that was a career-threatening injury, and it starts to come back, you obviously start having a lot of thoughts in the middle of the match.
“So, yeah, I started to think. And it was swollen, and the doctor came and she said she can’t do anything except tape it. So she just taped it, and you know, I took a few anti-inflammatories for the pain.”
In the doubles, Sania is seeded seventh with Spaniard Virginia Ruano Pascual. They play Jie Zheng of China and Yung-Jan Chan of Chinese Taipei.