Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Winning start for Sania-Chia; Bopanna bows out

Paris, May 27: Sania Mirza and Chia-Jung Chuang of Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) sailed into the doubles second round of French Open with a 7-5, 6-1 victory over Ipek Senoglu of Turkey and Yanina Wickmayer of Belarus at Roland Garros here on Wednesday.

Rohan Bopanna and Jonathan Elrich of Israel, however, lost a tough first-round encounter to Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain and Sergio Roitman of Argentina 4-6, 6-7 (10).

Sania and Chuang, seeded 14th, faced tough resistance in the first set that lasted 50 minutes. They converted all three break points that came their way while Ipek and Yanina wasted the same number of chances of breaking back.

Sania and Chuang raised their game in the second set, breaking their opponents twice and not conceding any break points, as they wrapped it up in just 24 minutes.

They will next face the winner of the match between Ukraine’s Viktoriya Kutuzova and Aravane Rezai of France and Polish pair of Agnieszka Radwanska and Urszula Radwanska.
Sania has bowed out of the singles competition, going down to Kazakhstan’s Galina Voskoboeva in the first round Tuesday. (IANS)