They forged an alliance and formed a formidable pair last year, taking the tennis world by storm. Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis won nine titles, including the year-end WTA championship. Later, Sania became world number one in partnership with Martina when they won the Charleston event. Sania also enjoyed her first ever women’s doubles Grand Slam title by winning the Wimbledon in company of Martina and later, the pair also won the 2015 US Open.

However, after winning four titles at the start of the season, they have managed to win only one (Rome) after that in three finals. They also failed to defend their Wimbledon crown. But the reports of the Indo-Swiss pair splitting during the initial days of the Rio Olympics came in as a shock to their fans, as the pair still had a lot to offer together.

However, rubbishing the reports that they were splitting because of the differences between them, Sania and Martina in a joint statement said they had mutually agreed that they would each be open to playing with other players for the remainder of the season.

“After three Grand Slam victories and 11 WTA doubles titles together, we have mutually agreed that we would each be open to playing with other players for the remainder of the season. Perhaps, because of our great past results, we have had very high expectations from our partnership and unfortunately did not get the results we desired recently. We would like to clarify that it was a totally professional decision based purely on our recent results,” they said in a statement.

“The professional decision has not and will not in any way affect the wonderful personal relationship that we continue to share. We also look forward to defending our title in the year-end WTA Finals in Singapore in October for which Santina has already qualified. We hope that this puts to rest some of the fabricated stories that have been doing the rounds in some sections of the media,” they added.