Competing in only her second Challenger event, Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza clinched the $50,000 ITF title in Lexington, USA after an upset win over top seed Julie Coin.
The Indian, who was seeded second in the event, defeated France’s Coin 7-6 (5), 6-4 on Sunday. The last time Sania competed in a Challenger event was way back in 2003.
This was Sania’s 13th ITF singles title and the first after the WTA Hyderabad Open in 2005.
She also has eight WTA doubles titles — the Hyderabad Open (2004), Bangalore, Kolkata (both 2006), New Haven, Stanford, Cincinnati and Fes (all in 2007) and Ponte Verda Beach (2009) — to her credit.
She has also clinched four ITF doubles titles. It has been a good year for Sania so far. The Hyderabadi has won first Grand Slam title of any kind when she partnered Mahesh Bhupathi to lift the Australian Open mixed doubles trophy. The feat also made her the first Indian woman ever to win a Grand Slam title and the third Indian overall, after Bhupathi and Leander Paes.
There was good news for the 22-year-old on Monday. She rose three places to 80th in this week’s WTA singles rankings. However, she dropped 10 spots to 49th in the WTA doubles list. In the ATP rankings, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi held on to their sixth and eighth spots respectively in doubles list.
Meanwhile, Somdev Devvarman and Prakash Amritraj are one step away from making the singles’ main draw of the $630,500 ATP LA Open after advancing to the third and final round of the qualifying event in Los Angeles.
The second seeded Somdev beat his Slovakian opponent 6-1, 7-6 (1) while unseeded Prakash defeated Germany’s Frank Moser 7-6 (6), 6-1 in his second round. Somdev will next take on American sixth seed Alex Bogomolov Jr. Prakash will take on fifth seed American Ryan Sweeting.
No comments:
Post a Comment