Paes-Damm pair advances, Sania-Vizner crashes out of US Open

New York, Sep 4 (UNI) Leander Paes kept the Indian challenge alive as he teamed up with Czech Martin Damm to beat the Austrian-German pair of Alexander Peya and Bjorn Phau 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) to enter the third round of the men's doubles event, while curtains came down on Sania Mirza's campaign after she lost her first round mixed doubles match at the US Open here.

The sixth seeded pair of Paes and Damm will now take on the 11th seeded Austrian duo of Julian Knowle and Jurgen Melzer.

However, it was all over for Sania Mirza and after her disappointing exit from the singles and women's doubles events, the Indian crashed out of the mixed doubles as well.

Sania had teamed up with Czech Pavel Vizner and the duo went down 2-6, 6-3, 7-10 to the sixth seeded Slovenian-Serbian pair of Katarina Srebotnik and Nenad Zimonjic.

Paes and Damm were in fine form in the opening set and gave away little before running away with it to seize the initiative but the duo had to struggle hard in the next set, which was decided through tie-break.

The sixth seeds were pushed hard by their unheralded rivals but Paes and Damm overcame the jitters to seal the issue in their favour in the tie-breaker.

However, things went horribly wrong for Sania and Pavel and the pair was completely out of sorts in the first set against their seeded opponents.

Sania and Pavel then staged a dramatic comeback and surprised Katarina and Nenad to equalise by taking the second set. But the effort proved to be a flash in the pan and the Indo-Czech duo could not build on their revival as Katarina and Nenad held their nerves to win the match in the tie-breaker.

Meanwhile, in the boys' singles competition, which started yesterday, sixth seeded Sanam Singh made shocking first round exit losing 1-6,1-6 to unheralded Canadian Yoann Re.

Disappointment continued as Rupesh Roy blew away a set's advantage to lose 6-4, 5-7, 0-6 against Portugal's Gastao Elias in another first round boys' singles match.

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