Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and her Kazakh partner Yaroslava Shvedova outclassed Italian wildcards Sara Errani and Martina Trevisan to enter the semi-finals of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia at Rome on Friday. The third seeds needed only 1 hour and 8 minutes to dismiss the challenge of Errani and Trevisan, 6-4, 6-1.
Mirza and Shvedova made 78% of their first serves and converted six out of their 10 break point opportunities while having their own service games broken just thrice.
Hingis vs Mirza up next
The win set up a blockbuster semi-final showdown between Mirza and her former partner, Martina Hingis. The Swiss Miss and Chinese Taipei’s Yung-Jan Chan, who are seeded second, have been in impressive form and have already clinched two titles this year with their most recent one coming on the clay courts of Madrid last week.
For the new team of Mirza and Shvedova, who joined forces only last week, this will indeed be a stiff challenge.
In men’s doubles, Rohan Bopanna is still alive in the draw. The Indian, who won the Monte Carlo Masters title alongside Pablo Cuevas, will take on fourth-seeded Frenchmen Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert for a place in the semi-finals.
Raja/Sharan prevail over Paes at Bordeaux
Among other Indians in action this week, Purav Raja and Divij Sharan continued their fine run at the BNP Paribas Primrose Bordeaux Challenger. Seeded third, the all-Indian pair got the better of second seeds Leander Paes and Scott Lipsky, 6-2, 6-3.
The Indo-American duo was crowned the men’s doubles champions at the Tallahassee Challenger in April. But they failed to replicate that effort against Raja and Sharan, who broke them as many as five times.
They will meet the fourth seeds Santiago Gonzalez and Artem Sitak in the summit clash.
Gunneswaran/Vardhan lose Samarkand final
At the Samarkand Challenger, Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Vishnu Vardhan went down fighting 6-7(2), 3-6 to fellow unseeded combine of Laurynas Grigelis and Zdenek Kolar in the final.
The Indian pair saved all seven of the break points they faced in the first set which eventually went to Grigelis and Kolar in a tie-break. The latter grabbed only one break of serve in the second set which was enough to decide the outcome of the match.
