Third seeds Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova were upset in the women’s doubles final of the Miami Open by the unseeded team of Gabriela Dabrowski and Yifan Xu on Sunday. The Canadian-Chinese team won in straight sets 6-4, 6-3 in 68 minutes.

Earlier, it was the Indo-Czech pairing that started off as favourites in the match, going on to take an early lead with a break in the opening game of the first set. However, Dabrowski and Xu immediately mounted a comeback and won the opening set to take the lead in the match.

They continued with their attacking game in the second set as well and were comfortably up 4-1, before Mirza and Strycova stabilised the scoreline in their favour. They weren’t, however, able to thwart Dabrowski and Xu from serving out the match in the ninth game of the second set, which saw them hoist their maiden WTA Premier Mandatory title.

Dabrowski and Xu had recently formed their partnership, right before the start of the Miami Open and had taken quite an interesting route into the final. They began the tournament with an upset over eighth seeds Abigail Spears and Katarina Srebotnik, before ousting second seeds Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova in the quarter-finals. In the semi-finals, they defeated fourth seeds Andrea Hlavackova and Shuai Peng before wrapping up the week with one last upset.

For Mirza and Strycova, the loss sets them back yet again, in their quest to win their first WTA team title in 2017. Aside of the Sydney Open in January, this was the first tournament the duo had come closest to winning the title. The week before, in Indian Wells, they were ousted in the quarter-finals, and before that had lost in the semi-finals in both the Qatar and Dubai Opens in February. Mirza, however, won the Brisbane Open title this year, in January, teaming up with Bethanie Mattek-Sands.