Sania Mirza may not have come into this world with a racket in her hand, but it didn’t take long for the tennis phenomenon to pick one up. Born on November 15, 1986, in Mumbai, India, Sania was encouraged to start playing the sport at the age of 6. “I used to go swimming and passed the tennis courts every day,” she recalls, “and that’s how it started. My mum said ‘Why don’t you play tennis in your summer holidays because you have nothing to do except swim for an hour or whatever?’, and that’s how I started playing.”
Getting her career on track was another matter altogether. “My mother took me to a coach, who initially refused to coach me because I was too small,” says Mirza. “After a month, he called my parents to say he’d never seen a player that good at such a young age.”
Encouraged by the coach’s assessment, Sania continued to train long and hard while her peers enjoyed more frivolous pursuits. In retrospect, she realizes she may have missed out on having a regular childhood, but doesn’t regret it for a moment. “I realized that if you don’t make those sacrifices, I don’t think you can make something out of your life,” she says. “Sometimes I did feel I was missing out, like sometimes I’d want to go to a birthday party but I couldn’t because I had tennis.” Fortunately, Sania’s remarkable focus and determination paid off.