Tennis News
At Australian Open 2009, Melbourne

Mixed doubles draw is out ... Lee and Cara r top-seed and facing Zimo and his German partner in the first round ... Mahesh and Sania r in bottom draw and r facing 6th seed Czech pair ... It seems Rohan missed MXD due to his doubles lower ranking.

Mixed Doubles
[R1] (1) Cara Black (ZIM)/ Leander Paes (IND) vs Anna-Lena Groenefeld (GER)/ Nenad Zimonjic (SRB)
[R1] Sania Mirza (IND)/ Mahesh Bhupathi (IND) vs (6) Kveta Peschke (CZE)/ Pavel Vizner (CZE)

Singles
[R2] Sania Mirza (IND,107) l (10) Nadia Petrova (RUS,11) 36 26

Sania started well getting first break point on Petrova's serve on 3rd game but couldn't convert it due to excellent services from Petrova ... But Petrova immediately broke Sania in next game to win first set with this single break ... In 4th game of second set Sania had 2 break-points but again she failed to convert it ... But Petrova broke Sania's serve in 5th game on luv and in 7th game after duece ... And served couple of aces in the final 8th game to win match.

Petrova played solid game with very few errors and her serve was also working like magic for her ... First set was lot closer than score suggest and Sania's failue to convert 2 break-points in 4th game of second set gave momentum to Petrova.

It was heartening to see Sania's lethal forehands and cross-court shots with famous powerful backhand cross-court were working ... Many times she missed shot by few centimeters after controlling the points ... As usual her serve was worry, more when her first serve doesn't work then her 'hit-me-winner' second serve come into picture ... I feel she was lacking rhythm due to lack of match practice and so playing more tournaments will definitely bring her ranking in top-50, but need more improvement (defensive shots and in second serve) and consistency in her game to move inside top-25.