Tennis News
At Australian Open 2009, Melbourne

Mixed Doubles
[SF] Sania Mirza (IND)/ Mahesh Bhupathi (IND) bt Iveta Benesova (CZE)/ Lukas Dlouhy (CZE) 64 61

[F] Sania Mirza (IND)/ Mahesh Bhupathi (IND) vs Nathalie Dechy (FRA)/ Andy Ram (ISR)

Junior Boys' Singles
[SF] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND,2) bt (7) Adrien Puget (FRA,20) 64 64

[F] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND,2) vs Alexandros-Ferdinandos Georgoudas (GER,56)

Doubles
[SF] (1) Yuki Bhambri (IND)/ Liang-Chi Huang (TPE) l Mikhal Biryukov (RUS)/ Yasutaka Uchiyama (JPN) 36 16

In the first set both pair traded early breaks but important break came in 9th game ... With that break Mahesh and Sania won first set in 32 mins ... In the second set they broke Czech pair's serve in 1st,5th and 7th games to won match in only 54 mins ... In the final they r facing French-Israeli pair.

Yuki started well breaking Puget's serve in the second game and with that single break he won first set in 37 mins ... In the second set Yuki broke Puget's serve in the first game but Puget immediately break back to made it 1-all ... But Puget surged ahead breaking Yuki's serve in 4th game ... But Yuki turned table from 1-4 to won next 5 games ... Yuki came back strongly after slip up in 2nd set from 1-4 down he allowed Puget to win just 3 points of next 23 points (while he won 20 points) ... He broke Puget's serve in 7th and 9th games to won this match in 1 hr 19 mins to move into Australian Open Junior Boys' Singles final ... So with that he became first Indian player after Leander Paes to reach Junior Grandslam final ... But in doubles semi-final, he and his Taipei partner lost in just 42 mins ... I feel playing so many matches in last 2 weeks take toll on Yuki ... May be its good considering now he can concentrate more to his singles final.

I m still impressed with Yuki ... Yuki is showing how much he talented and improved these days from the way he is dominating this junior section ... May be very few junior players can give him trouble .. But what a display of game and mental toughness by him .. Coming back from 1-4 down and in a such dominating way winning next 20 pts of 23 they played .. Simply amazing .. This kid is awesome!!! Truly THE talent which we r searching at junior level for many years.

In the final he is facing German unseeded player, who defeated 2nd seed player in straight sets.
------------------------------------------------------------
At $50K Carson Challenger, California, USA

[R2] Prakash Amritraj (IND,209) l Wayne Odesnik (USA,115) 26 46

Doubles
[QF] (4) Harsh Mankad (IND)/ Purav Raja (IND) bt Luka Gregorc (SCO)/ Andrea Stoppini (ITA) 63 64

[SF] (4) Harsh Mankad (IND)/ Purav Raja (IND) vs (1) Scott Lipsky (USA)/ David Martin (USA)

Good easy straight sets victory for our pair ... With their performance as per seeding will help Harsh to push his ranking towards 175 in doubles ... In semis they r having very tough opponents, who r regular on tour and r in top-50 doubles ranking.
------------------------------------------------------------
At $25K Laguna Nigel Challenger, CA, USA

[R1] (8) Sunitha RAO (IND,196) l Alina JIDKOVA (RUS,237) 46 75 46

Doubles
[R1] Sunitha Rao (IND)/ Alexandra Panova (RUS) l (WC) Anne Yelsey (USA)/ Riza Zalameda (USA) 60 67(3) (4)10

Sunitha's disappointing performance continue at challenger level.