Sania Mirza reveals role model, earliest tennis memories and parents influence

Mirza, who was the first Indian to win a WTA singles title in her hometown Hyderabad event in 2005, brought down the curtains on her playing career earlier this year at the Dubai Tennis Championship. During her career, she won three different grand slam titles in doubles events.

The 36-year-old won major titles in Wimbledon, Australia Open and US Open. She also reached the finals at Roland Garros. But how did it all start and would she have picked a different sport?

In an interview with former India cricketer Veda Krishnamurthy on JioCinema original show ‘Home of Heroes’, the tennis great opened up on her early days in the sport, player she looked up to and possibly playing cricket if she was a boy.

In one of her first memory of being linked with the sport, Mirza revealed that it was her mother who wanted her to play tennis when she was six years old and only as tall as the net.

“My earliest tennis memory is when I was six years old, and I used to go for swimming every day in my summer holidays. And my first memory is when my mom went to the tennis court and told the coach that I want her to play tennis. And I was just above the net. I think I was very small. And he refused,” Mirza said.

The Indian tennis great also revealed that her mother had to fight with the coach after he refused to let her play and that was her earliest memory of tennis.

“And he said, no, she’s too small. I’ve never had such a young player. Imagine 30 years ago, it was unheard of for a six-year-old girl to play tennis in Hyderabad. So, my mom had to fight with him, actually had an argument with him and said that she is my daughter, I want her to play. What is your problem? So that is actually my earliest memory of tennis.

“And then finally I took a huge racket. I remember it was like a full-size racket and I connected ball to racket straightaway. And that was my first memory of tennis. And after that, I just remember falling in love with the game,” Mirza added.

Mirza, whose family had connection with cricket, reveals she would also be playing cricket if she was a boy and spoke about the mentality of many households towards girl playing any sport in those days.

“I know I shouldn’t say this to you, but at that point of time, if I was a boy, I would probably be playing cricket and I know you being a girl, playing cricket was so different, right? Just playing sport was different,” Mirza told Veda.

“And honestly, I think because I was a girl, they were like I don’t think cricket is for girls. That mentality that was then and still there in many households. And unfortunately, or fortunately, they had that mentality, not mentality, but that’s the way things were back then, 30 years ago.”

Mirza also picked 22-time Grand Slam champion Steffi Graf as her role-model and added that there wasn’t any athlete in India apart from PT Usha that she could look up to her childhood.

“I had a role model in Steffi Graf because that was the only person. There was not really a woman athlete in our country outside of PT Usha that we could look up to growing up and that was probably the only household name that was sort of there in the subcontinent where everybody knew, if you want to be a woman athlete, you can be like PT Usha,” Mirza said.

“And for me, I always looked up to Steffi, and I wanted to play a forehand like her and many years later, it was a huge compliment when people used to tell me, oh your forehand is a lot like Steffi Graf. So that’s why I try to emulate and that’s who I kind of tried to follow in my journey.”