Internet Desk: Indian ace tennis star Sania Mirza is just a win away to clinch her seventh Grand Slam title after she reached the final of Australian Open mixed doubles with her partner Ivan Dodig on Friday. They have beaten local favourites Samantha Stosur & Sam Groth in a nail biting match.
Indo-Croatian pair of Sania & Dodig won the match by 6-4, 2-6, 10-5 to seal their spot in the Final. The match was lasted for one hour and 18 minutes.
Earlier in her career Sania has won three mixed doubles crown, the last came in as the US Open title in the year 2014 with Brazilian Bruno Soares. With her present team-mate Dodig, she had a chance to win the French Open title but unfortunately they lost Leander Paes and her partner Martina Hingis in the final showdown.
The opening set featured a lot of breaks and the only one to not concede a break of serve was Sania.
However, in the second set, the Indian lost her serve twice — fourth and ninth games — and it all boiled down to the match tie-breaker.
It was 3—3 in the tie-break but the second seeds pulled away after that, taking five points in a row. The Australians, especially Groth was struggling with his first serve and they paid a huge price for that.
Groth lost both the points on his serve on the eighth and ninth points, while Dodig curtailed unforced errors in the nick of time.
Sania sent a lob out on the first match point but converted the second when Dodig hit an unreturnable volley to the left of Stosur.
Sania and Dodig next face the winners of the other semifinal between Elina Svitolina and Chris Guccione and the combo of Abigail Spears and Juan Sebastian Cabal.
Sania Mirza is the only Indian, who is still in the Australian Open, as Leander Paes, Purav Raja, Divij Sharan and juniors Zeel Desai and Siddhant Banthia all were out of the tournament early.
With inputs from PTI.