Cara Black and Liezel Huber Clinch 2008 Season-Ending No. 1 Ranking
Posted by Aaress Lawless on Oct 12, 2008 | Print |
Cara Black and Liezel Huber will end the 2008 Sony Ericsson WTA Tour season as the best doubles players in the world.
The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour confirmed on Sunday that the US Open champions have clinched the season-ending No. 1 ranking.
This is the second season in succession that the pair will finish as the joint top-ranked players on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour Doubles Rankings. The duo is only the second doubles team to finish a season as the joint No 1 ranked players. They are also only the fourth doubles pair to jointly hold the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour No 1 Doubles Ranking since its inception in 1984.
“We are very excited to be at the top of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour doubles rankings,” said Cara Black, the 29-year-old Zimbabwean. “Staying at the top is our ultimate goal and we want to try to stay there as long as we can. It’s nice to be able to reach your goal even before the year is over. We worked really hard this year and had some really good focus going. We struggled a little bit at the Slams this year, but winning the US Open was incredible. Our goal every year is to win as many tournaments as possible. We are really excited and pleased with being the World No.1.”
“It’s been a great season for us,” said Liezel Huber, the 33-year-old South African-born US citizen. “We started off slower than last year but we ended on a high and we are very happy and we will be back next year.”
“Cara and Liezel have had another amazing year on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour,” said Larry Scott, CEO of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour. “Probably the only achievement harder than reaching the No. 1 position is repeating the feat, and Cara and Liezel have done just that, proving that they are two of the great doubles champions in the history of the Tour. It will be exciting to watch them compete at the season-ending Sony Ericsson Championships in Doha to see if they can again emerge as champions of this prestigious event.”
Black and Huber first teamed up on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in 2001, winning their very first tournament at the Princess Cup in Tokyo before playing sporadically until the start of 2005. There they really came into form winning the Telecom Italia Masters Roma in Rome, reaching the final of Roland Garros and winning Wimbledon (their third tournament victory) before Huber suffered a severe ACL injury which later required surgery, bringing their season to a premature end.
The two reunited at the start of the 2007 season, winning their fourth tournament together at the Australian Open and haven’t looked back since, winning eight titles last year including the Australian Open and Wimbledon. The pair are also the defending champions of the Sony Ericsson Championships. Black has held the individual Doubles No 1 ranking since July 9, 2007 with Huber joining her at No 1 on November 12, 2007.
In 2008 the pairing, entering the Kremlin Cup in Moscow, has won eight doubles titles so far. They just missed out on their ninth title of the year this weekend in Moscow, losing in straight sets in the Kremlin Cup final to Nadia Petrova and Katarina Srebotnik.
Those titles include the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships in Dubai, the Qatar Telecom German Open in Berlin, the AEGON Classic in Birmingham, the AEGON International in Eastbourne, the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford, The Rogers Cup presented by National Bank in Montreal and the US Open, the pair’s fourth career Grand Slam title.
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Kurt | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
And Petrova and Srebotnik are playing together next year, wow. I wonder who Sugiyama will partner with.