New York: After some grilling in their respective matches, Sania Mirza and Leander Paes have made it to the US Open women’s and men’s doubles quarterfinal respectively.
Paes and Radek Stepanek battled it out for more than two hours against the French duo of Michael Llodra and Nicolas Mahut to seal their berth for the last eight, while Mirza and her Chinese partner, Jie Zheng the knocked out Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Kveta Peschke.
Paes and Stepanek won their tussle by 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 after two hours and 12 minutes of hard work against the 14th seeded Llodra and Mahut. The Indo-Czech pair was going neck-in-neck till the 11th before Stepanek commited a fault and went onto hand over the first set to the opponents.
The second set became a tough nut to crack as the Indian-Czech was trailing by couple of break points in the first game. Stepanek came to the rescue and saved the set as he hit an ace on his serve.
Paes was looking slightly off-colour as he squandered the first break chance in the next game when he didn’t have any reply to Llodra’s serve. Paes went on to drop his serve in the seventh game and from there on match took a dramatic turn as the French sealed the second set while Llodra served for the 10th game of the set.
Both the pairs came hard at one another in the final set they contested, but the Indo-Czech duo had a share of luck as Mahut committed some errors to give his oppositions' a lead. Paes-Stepanek finished the match on high, as they hit an ace on the serve after Llodra mistimed a shot to give away two break points to the Indo-Czech opposition.
Bopanna ans Sharan makes it to next round
The sixth seeded pair of Rohan Bopanna and Edouard Roger-Vasselin fought hard to register a win against the Russian pair of Nikolay Davydenko and Mikhail Elgin 7-6 (2) 7-6 (0).
This Indo-French pair will now take on the 12th seeded British pair of Colin Fleming and Jonathan Marray.
Meanwhile, Divij Saran and his partner Yen Hsun Lu ousted the Israeli duo of Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram 6-4 5-7 7-6 (2) and will take on the fifth seeded duo of Dutch-Pakistani, Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and the Jean-Julien Rojer.
Sania and Zheng cruise into next round
In the women’s doubles match, Sania and her partner Zheng overpowered their opponents in one hour and 12 minutes. They won the match by 6-2, 6-3 against Groenefeld and Peschke. They broke their opponents twice in each set to make their way into the quarter-finals.
