Press Trust of India
New York, Sept 10: In a double delight for Indian fans, veteran tennis star Leander Paes and Sania Mirza stormed into the finals of the US Open mixed doubles and women’s doubles draw respectively with common partner Martina Hingis.
Fourth seeds Paes and Hingis were in top form as they staved off a tough challenge from the second-seeded pair of Rohan Bopanna and Yung-Jan Chan of Chinese Taipei 6-2, 7-5.
Both the teams served four aces each but the Bopanna-Chan combine suffered on the unforced errors count, which was 12 as compared to 9 from Paes and Hingis.
The Indo-Swiss pair will now face the US duo of Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Sam Querrey.
Earlier Hingis combined superbly with Sania as the duo made it look relatively simple against the Italian pair of Sara Errani and Flavia Pennetta 6-4, 6-1.
The top-seeded pair will take on the winner of the second semi-final match between Casey Dellacqua (Australia)-Yaroslava Shvedova (Kazakhstan) and Anna-Lena Groenefeld (Germany)-Coco Vandeweghe (USA).
Both the Indian players saw success on Court 17 as a host of nation’s tennis fans turned up to back their stars in action.
Paes not only thanked all the fans, who came in numbers to support the stars. “I thank all the Indians who came here to support me and Martina and also Sania and Martina in the other game,”Paes said.
There was disappointment though in the Junior Girls Singles category as Karman Kaur Thandi’s winning run ended against Dalma Galfi in the third round. The 17-year-old Indian went down against the second-seeded German 6-4, 7-6.
