Indians have a good week - Sania and Paes win titles

Sania Mirza of India and Jie Zheng of China pose with their championship trophies

Sania Mirza along with new Chinese partner Zheng Jie won the New Haven title. They defeated the second seeds Katarina Srebotnik and Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-3 6-4 . This is Sania’s second title at New Haven. She had earlier triumphed in 2007. They now seem well poised to have a good run at the US Open.

They had earlier won the initial two rounds in tie breaks, both of which had similar scores of 10-8. With this win, Sania is now 3-1 in finals this year. Incidentally, all her wins have come at premier level tournaments.

At Winston-Salem, the star pair of Leander Paes and Daniel Nestor won. This is the first time that a team with both players above the age of 40 is winning an ATP Tour title.

Paes commented: “We wanted to get a few matches in. We wanted to see how we combine on the court. Through the whole week, we played some really tough opponents and getting to win the tournament with someone who’s a legend is really something special.”

This is Paes and Nestor’s first final of the year. With this win, Paes becomes the fourth Indian after Rohan Bopanna, Mahesh Bhupathi, Divij Sharan, and Purav Raja to win a title this year.

Indians seem to be running into form in time for the US Open Championships. Here’s a look at Indian players and their partners for the final slam of the year.

In the $15,000 Futures event held at Libreville, Gabon, India’s Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan lost in the singles finals to James McGee of Ireland 4-6 6-7(4). He was seeded second while his opponent was seeded first. He will 15 collect points for his effort.

As the top seeds in the doubles competition, Jeevan and Vishnu Vardhan faced second seeds Sam Barry of Ireland and Elie Rousset of France in the finals. The match was earlier suspended with the Indians leading 6-4 1-1. The final score was 6-4 7-6(4) in favor of the Indians.

In the $10,000 women’s event in New Delhi, Shweta Rana, seeded seventh, finished runner-up to Katherine Ip of Hong Kong. She lost 3-6 3-6 to the unseeded player. In the doubles finals, Shweta yet again lost along with Swede Matilda Hamlin to the Indo-Japanese pair of Prarthana Thombare and Akari Inoue. India’s challenge suffered a setback with the withdrawal of top ranked Ankita Raina with an abdominal injury. She is expected to participate in the event to be held next week in the same venue.