No matter the results, Sania Mirza remains proud

2:17 PM ET

PARIS — Indian tennis star Sania Mirza is not the sort of person who dwells on setbacks for long, even when it’s a just-lost chance to make more rarefied history.

So after she and her doubles partner, Martina Hingis, saw their chance at a “Santina” Slam — or sweep of all four Grand Slam doubles titles — end with a 6-3, 6-2 third-round loss to Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic at the French Open, Mirza went right back to work with partner Ivan Dodig in mixed doubles and moved into the final opposite — guess who? — Hingis and India’s Leander Paes for the mixed doubles title here.

Again, Mirza, along with Dodig, came up short, this time falling in a super tiebreaker, 4-6, 6-4, (10-8). For Paes, he completed the career mixed-doubles Slam, winning the French Open for the first time in, amazingly, his 20th attempt.

Despite the disappointments down the stretch, Mirza said she looks at her and Hingis’ near miss of the Grand Slam philosophically.

Sania Mirza had her string of three straight Grand Slam doubles titles snapped at the French Open. Fabio Averna/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Mirza notes that since she and Hingis won the first tournament they played together last year at Indian Wells, they have hardly stopped winning on the way to becoming the top-ranked women’s doubles team in the world. So in a way, Mirza figures, all the questions about the loss since are actually a compliment, not something she dislikes revisiting.

“It hurt,” Hingis conceded Thursday.

But, Mirza added, “When we won our second-round match here 6-2 and 6-love, we had one person at our press conference, and the next day we had about 10 when we lost. That obviously says a lot.

“Because when you’re No. 1 in the world and have the results that we had, people expect us to win everything now. It’s like when Novak [Djokovic] goes to play. If he loses, it’s the biggest thing in the …

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