What a fantastic win for Sania Mirza in the PQF at the #1.34K Acura Classic WTA in San Diego! .. 6-1 6-2 blitzkireg over the 6th seed Dinara Safina (RUS,14) who had a pile-driver pummell her into the subsoil and bedrock (OK, I have to use a civil engineering analogy sometime out here) .. Please see the match reports and details posted by the TennisIndia onsite correspondents, Varma and myself (scroll down a little at that page). Today, Sania plays the top seed Maria Sharapova (RUS,2) .. The only time these two faced each other was in the final-16 at the US Open in 2005, when Sharapova seemed to get dominated and unable to handle many of Sania's winners, but still managed to win by a 62 61 score, thanks to her never-say-die attitude in running shots down and forcing Sania to make mistakes. Sania is clearly playing much less error-prone and much more accurate a game these days. An upset is certainly not out of the questions today .. We will be there to cover it today .. The match is at about 12 noon at San Diego (8 pm FRI London, 3.30 am SAT in India) .. I believe it will be on ZeeTV in India, probably live, and will be telecast tape-delayed in the US an hour or so later on ESPN and TennisChannel.
Meanwhile, The India #2 Sunitha Rao (IND,243) added to the gazillionth upsets pulled by Indians (Rohan, Prakash, Somdev, Sania, Sunitha etc) in the last 4-5 weeks ... Atthe $50K Vancouver challenger in Canada, Sunitha upset third seed Abigail Spears (USA,164), by a 62 62 score yesterday .. She had beaten a qualifier, Augustina Lepore (ARG,513), by the same score in the R1 earlier .. Sunitha Rao, still only 21 years old, has been playing at a higher level for the last few weeks too ..
A third upset artist this week, though at a lower level event, has been Ashutosh Singh (IND,737), unseeded but on a great run at the $10K+H ITF futures in Delhi .. Among only two Indians to even reach the QF there, he has now come to the final, with a 64 64 upset of the seocnd seed, Yu Wang J. (CHN,632) today .. In the QF yesterday, Ashutosh beat Tsu Yang Lin of Taiwan, 62 62 .. See the tournament discussion thread we have for the three-futures sequence ongoing in India ..
At the big $125K+H Segovia challenger, Rohan Bopanna and Aisam Qureshi (PAK) have reached the doubles semifinal .. Rohan, ranked #101 this week will crack the top-100 next week, and become the first Indian in over 10 years to do that .. The last one was a guy called Ma-something Bhu-something ....
By the way, I hardly mentioned the fabulous run by Somdev DevVarman in the qualifying rounds of the $600K Washingdon DC ATP last weekend .. Can you believe that the dude murdered the qualies second seed #41 Andre Sa by a 62 61 score, afterupsetting the 5th seed Kamil Kapcoviv, 62 62 ? .. Read all about his incredible exploits in the WashingtonDC ATP thread .. After something like 30 matches dating back to January in college, and some top-100 upsets etc, Somdev finally had a poor serving day in the first round after he qualified in, falling to Paul Goldstein (USA,51)
