Hingis and Mirza announce split

World No.1 doubles duo Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza are splitting up.

The pair announced the separation with a co-written message on their respective Facebook pages on Wednesday morning (AEST).

“After three Grand Slam victories and eleven 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,” the message said.

“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. 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.”

Hingis and Mirza’s 16-month partnership reaped 14 titles, including three Grand Slam victories and the WTA Finals crown in Singapore.

They began the 2016 season on fire, winning their opening 19 matches and scooping titles in Brisbane, Sydney, the Australian Open – their third straight major title – and St Petersburg, before finally having their unbeaten run brought to an end in the Doha quarterfinals by Russians Elena Vesnina and Daria Kasatkina.

Those results formed part of a stellar nine-tournament, 41-match winning streak, beginning with the 2015 US Open and extending five months.

Their success began as soon as they teamed up in March 2015; they won their first three titles together at Indian Wells, Miami and Charleston.

Yet following that loss in Doha this year, the duo’s results began to go south.

In their next nine tournaments they won just one – in Rome – and fell early at Roland Garros as they were bidding to hold all four major titles at once. Their title defence at Wimbledon came to an end in the quarterfinals, and their last tournament together was a quarterfinal loss in Montreal.

A story in The Times of India has reported that Mirza will team with Barbora Strycova while Hingis will partner Coco Vandeweghe.