French Open: For Sania-Lucie experience is power card

Sania Mirza and Czech Lucie Hradecka used experience and their stellar power game to get their French Open campaign off to a telling start. The Indo-Czech pairing, aged 35 and 37 respectively, will go up against the Slovenian duo of Kaja Juvan and Tamara Zidansek in the second-round. “It’ll be similar to our first match, they’re also singles players, like in our opener (against Jasmine Paolini and Martina Trevisan),” the Indian said.

“We changed tactics at the end of the first set,” Sania said of the first-round outing which the Indo-Czech team won in three sets. “We needed to find a solution, needed to make them play outside their comfort zone. We needed to lob more and make them play the lines (go down-the-line).

They’re singles players and strong from the back of the court. They were making us play their game for a little over a set.” Sania said the scoring format – playing a full set for the decider and also the deuce-advantage pattern -- gave them breathing space. “We believe in our game that’s most important,” she said.

“When we hit the ball big, they’re going to be on the backfoot, whoever it is who is standing across the net from us.” Sania picked monochrome for Roland Garros -- shorts and tees paired with compression tights. For her opening doubles match on Thursday, she turned up in the dominant colour of the city’s fashion folk –black. It was navy for her first-round, mixed-doubles match alongside Croatian Ivan Dodig.

The shorts and tee, in keeping with the co-ord sets rage, cut a flowy silhouette. Sania and Dodig, the 2016 French Open and 2017 US Open finalists, spoke about the last dance after the Indian announced that 2022 will be her final year on the tennis Tour. “I want to play with players who I share a