New York: Leander Paes continues to sizzle on the US Open courts as the ace Indian pro stormed into the semi-finals of the men's doubles and final of mixed doubles competitions with his respective partners in New York.
In the mixed doubles semi-finals, fifth seeded Paes and Cara Black of Zimbabwe pipped the Swede-Russian pair of Jonas Bjorkman and Nadia Petrova 6-4, 6-4.
In the summit clash of the mixed doubles Paes-Black face off against Liezel Huber of the United States and Briton Andy Murray, who beat American pair of Jill Craybas and Eric Butorac 6-3,6-4 in their semi-final encounter.
And in the mens doubles, Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy earned a spot in doubles semi-finals after defeating error prone Swede-Finland pair of Robert Lindstedt and Jarko Nieminen 6-3, 6-7 (2), 6-3 in the quarter-final clash, which lasted over two hours.
Paes-Dlouhy will now fight it out with Argentine pair of Maximo Gonzalez Juan Monaco, who beat Brazilian-Serbian duo of Bruno Soares and Dusan Vemic 6-2 6-7 (3) 6-3, for a place in the men's doubles final.
In the doubles quarters, Paes-Dlouhy cashed in on mistakes of their opponents as Lindstedt-Nieminen wasted three breakpoints in the first set while Paes-Dlouhy converted the one and only chance to go ahead.
In the second set, both the teams converted two of the three chances but Paes and Dlouhy faltered in the tie-breaker allowing the rival team to stretch the issue to the third set.
In the decisive final set, Lindstedt-Nieminen once again came a cropper squandering four breakpoints while the Indo-Czech duo managed to convert one of the three chances to clinch the issue.
Mahesh Bhupathi has already crashed out of both the men's doubles and mixed doubles events.
Comments
0 comment