Between 1998 and 2008, Cara and Liezel have played 64 times together. They won their first title in 2001 in Tokyo. A few more tournaments played, and then in 2005 they started an exclusive partnership.

After quite a slow start that year, the girls reached the final in Berlin, and won Rome tournament. They also reached two slams finals that year, losing in Roland Garros to Ruano Pascual/Suarez but winning in Wimbledon against Mauresmo and Kuznetsova.

Then a few days after that big victory, the team had to face a strong reversal of fortune when Liezel hurt her knee badly, which left her out of the courts for six months.

Cara finished the year with another partner, and kept on playing with her in 2006. Liezel came back in January 2006 and then started to play with several partners (Martina Navratilova, Sania Mirza, Anna Lena Groenefeld, …).

At the beginning of 2007, the two girls from Africa decided to team up again and immediately got back to the top, winning the Australian Open. In 2007, they won 9 tournaments (2 Grand Slams, 1 Season Ending Championships, 2 Tier I and 4 Tier II). They finished the year co World number 1. And the team has been leading the Race to the Championships all year long and was the first to qualify for Madrid, where they won again.

2008 was another great year for the Black and Huber team. Despite a difficult start of the year (early defeats in Australia and Paris Indoors and mixed fortune in the US spring), Cara and Liezel could regroup through the year and end it with an amazing last 5 months (7 tournaments won out of 11 from Birmingham to Doha). And thus they could win even more tournaments in 2008 than the year before;

So in 2008, they won 10 tournaments (Antwerp, Dubai, Berlin, Birmingham, Eastbourne, Stanford, Montréal, the US Open, Zurich and the Season Ending Championships). They also met in the Mixed Doubles final of the US Open (final won by Cara and Leander Paes vs Liezel and Jamie Murray). And for the second year in a row, they finish the season as co World number one doubles players (in total 52 weeks for Liezel and 88 weeks for Cara). To start the 2009 season, they have over 1800 points more than their opponents, with almost no points to defend in the four first months.

Now, in total, Cara and Liezel have played 64 times together, and won 22 tournaments, for an impressive 34% of success (4 Grand Slams, 2 Season Ending Championship, 5 Tier I, 10 Tier II and 1 Tier III). They have one of the best records for a doubles team in tennis history.

As we can see, their pairing has already had great success, and no doubt Cara and Liezel will start the 2009 season with the idea to do even better.

 

2008 2007 2005 2004 2003 2001 1998