Assured Sania Mirza Eyes Top 20

You'll hear it every day, in every arena, at every age, in every sport. Confidence.

It's either high or it's lost, it shows in the shining face and tells in the wilting shoulders, it's what you find when you win and what you find it's hard to win without. Everyone knows what it feels like to own, but no can quite definitively describe it.

But Sania Mirza is giving it a shot, trying to explain how the mindset alters, how assuredness translates onto the court. She talks about when confidence leaks, "you find you miss the lines by an inch", but when you're winning, and the mind sings with conviction, "you hit the lines, you just believe 'I can go for a winner'."

We're talking confidence because Mirza, up to No 29 in the world, is enjoying being a temporary owner of it, having spent a year searching for it, finding it, using it, relishing it.

Hardy competitor

All belief accumulated from an encouraging start to the year was initally undone by a knee injury in March-April, yet Mirza, whose forehand flashes like her eyes, is a defiant beast.

She has rebounded this autumn with a staggering run of semi-final (Cincinnati), final (Stanford), quarter-final (San Diego), third round (Los Angeles), scrapping and slogging her way to consecutive wins over players ranked Nos 44, 19, 17, 22, 18, 44, 14, 12. Of course, she's "on a high", beating top 20 players, and then getting there herself, is her goal.

Players like Mirza, not an outrageous talent like Serena Williams but a hardy, arresting competitor, take small leaps, edge ahead in miniature bursts. All she asks from herself is proof of improvement, and it has come. Not yet 21, she is the first Indian to travel so far up the ranking ladder since Ramesh Krishnan touched No 23 in 1985.

Mirza is doing what you'd expect of any athlete, she's growing. Her first serve percentage is higher and her backhand feels sweeter. Her enhanced fitness, she says, allows her to get into better positions, or to run around her forehand if necessary. She won only six of 19 three-setters last year, but eight of 12 this year, and four of five during her four-week run.

Deep into matches, a leaner body helps, but more so a meaner mind. "I'm mentally more tough," she insists, pointing to her first-round match against Akiko Morgiami in Stanford where she was down a set, and then first 1-4, and then 3-5, yet extracted a win.

That match, and these four weeks, have been her "turning point", she says. Small lessons have been learnt and stored in the tennis library in her brain.

It didn't matter that the quality of tennis in the Morigami match wasn't the best, or that she was cramping the next day, she was glowing because "it's good to pull out tough matches, you get your self-belief back." As Indian tennis star Mahesh Bhupathi says about her: "Confidence comes from playing well and winning close matches that you're not supposed to or weren't earlier."

Scent of aggression

The education of Sania Mirza is a beautiful thing to watch. Her contests are with hundreds of women on the tour, yet also with herself. And every week this autumn her wings have grown an inch.

All athletes search for the time when they can fashion victory even on days when their rackets are a trifle disobedient, and Mirza says, some days she has got to this place. "It's impossible to play a good match every day, but I was finding a way to win".

If Mirza is thinking more about her game, she is compelling her opponents to think more about her. Her style will always carry the scent of aggression, but some of the rawness has been sand-papered.

"People earlier thought, put four balls in and she'll make a mistake or a winner," Mirza says. "When you don't, they wonder, why is she not missing, and they have to force the issue." Earlier, she concedes, "I probably did not have a plan B".

But how far she has come, how far removed the Mirza of August is from the Mirza of June, how transformed she is by winning a few matches, is evident in two stories she tells.

Mental toughness

In June this year, she lost 7-6 in the third to Mara Santangelo in Birmingham, and the next week against Francesca Schivaone in the Netherlands, she was up a set and a break, but subconsciously started thinking about Birmingham, about a match she had let go. In one of the classic signs of shaky confidence, Mirza started hoping Schivaone "would give me the points, make an error, rather than me taking it".

She lost.

Yet in August, when drawn against Shahar Peer, No.18, in San Diego, Mirza didn't blink, her belief surged. It's one of the tougher first rounds on the tour, yet she says, "I didn't believe I was going to lose, even though she was a top 20 player, even after losing the second set." She'd been to the final in Stanford the previous week and her mind was brimming with self-assurance. It still is.

Mirza will know that confidence dissipates as effortlessly as it arrives, a few bad matches and self-doubt infects the joints. So she has to make the most of this run, use its momentum, creep up the ranking ladder.

Bhupathi, who maintains she has top 20 potential, indicates that not much separates players ranked Nos.20-30 from those ranked Nos.5-20. As he says: "They are all as fit, their ability almost the same, it's about the mental toughness to win bigger matches at bigger tournaments."

Mirza, whose voice is alive with confidence, echoes Bhupathi's belief that not much distinguishes players inside and outside that top 20.

"Maybe", she says, "you can ask me (the difference) after the US Open for maybe I'll be in the top 20". It may not happen, but she has to believe it will.

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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/