Sania Mirza earned a shot at her second WTA singles title after edging past world number 51 Magdalena Rybarikova in the semi-finals of the $220,000 Pattaya Open on Saturday.
The unseeded Indian, ranked 126th in WTA charts, defeated her eighth seeded Slovakian opponent 6-4, 5-7, 6-1 in a two-hour long contest. The last time Sania reached the singles final of a WTA event was in 2007 when she made the summit clash of the Stanford classic.
This is for the fourth time in her career that Sania has reached the singles final of a WTA tour event.
She had become the first Indian player to win a WTA title when she won the Hyderabad Open in 2005. In the same year, she had reached the finals of the Forest Hill event in United States.
Sania broke Rybarikova in the fourth game of the deciding third set to give herself a 3-1 lead. She converted first of the three breakpoints, which she earned after the Slovakian double faulted.
Sania consolidated the lead after holding her serve in the next game before breaking Rybarikova to make it 5-1. The Indian then served out the match, converting her third match point.
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