Champions Tennis League: Martina Hingis steps it up

Hingis broke no sweat in marching past Heather Watson 5-3 and then, combined wonderfully with the towering Ivo Karlovic to edge out the pair of Watson-Fernando Ver-dasco 5-4 in the tie-breaker to compound Chennai’s misery.

Karlovic and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan then won the men’s doubles against Fernando Verdasco-Vishnu Vardhan 5-4 (5/3) before the Croatian was cut down to size 5-6 by Verdasco. It all started when Chennai captain Rainer Schuettler ran out of steam against Aces skipper Thomas Johansson in the opening Legends Singles clash, losing 3-5.

Hingis built on the momentum created by her captain against British women’s No.2 Watson, who never looked settled on the court.

Hingis broke Watson’s opening service game to take a 1-0 lead in the women’s singles, and then held her serve to go 2-0 up. Even though Watson broke Hingis at 1-2 to pull level, the Swiss Miss hit back immediately to break Watson to go 3-2 up. She held her serve before effecting yet another break to seal a 5-2 win.

“It’s huge! Not just for British tennis but for tennis the world over,” Watson said of the victory over Belgium. “I am really excited. I watched the doubles match on Saturday and the singles match yesterday (Sunday). It was amazing,” she said.

And the British women’s No.2 idolises the architect of Sunday’s victory — Andy Murray. “Andy is such a hero,” she said. “Seeing him play yesterday, fight for every point, was incredible. His opponents would hit the ball off the court and he would still run after it. There would be zero chance of his getting to the ball — it would be physically impossible — but he would still run his hardest to reach it.

“And when you see him do that for his country, you can see that he wants the win more for his team than for himself. It’s huge, it’s great. Everything about it is so positive. If I can be like Andy one day, it will be unbelievable,” a visibly thrilled Watson said.