NEWS
OTHER SPORTS
DIARY
PEOPLE
MATCH REPORTS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Paes, Vaidyanathan advance

Shailesh Soni

Leander Paes and Nirupama Vaidyanathan began their campaign in the Australian Open qualifier on a winning note today, scoring comfortable victories in the first round.

Paes, who is seeded ninth in the qualifiers, beat Finland's Ville Liukko 6-3, 7-6(7-3), while Nirupama Vaidyanathan defeated Australia's Jaslyn Hewitt, 6-0, 6-2 in the women's qualifiers.

Paes started the match a bit shakily, facing two break points after deuces in the very first game, but managed to save them. He had to serve at deuce once in the third game as well. He was again down 0-30 in fifth game and was broken on the fourth break point he faced, to fall behind 2-3. But thereafter, he came back strongly to win 16 of the next 18 points, breaking Liukko twice to win the set 6-3.

In the second set, games went with serves. At 3-3, Paes had a break chance off Liukko's serve, but could not convert it. He was in trouble for the first time in the set in game 10, when he was down 0-30 and faced a set point at 30-40, but he held on to make it 5-5. In the tie-breaker, Paes went up by two minibreaks quickly to 6-1. Liukko served twice, saving match-points, after which Paes finished the match on his own serve at 7-3.

Paes next plays Frantisek Cermak of Czeck Republic, who defeated Bjorn Phau, 7-6, 6-4 in his first round match. Sebastien De Chaunac and Marcos Ondruska are the other players from the Paes bracket who won their first round matches.

Nirupama Vaidyanathan started her match with a bang and the first set was over very fast in about 19 minutes, but the second set, despite the easy-looking scoreline, was far from easy, and it took almost 45 minutes to complete.

After Jaslyn held her serve for the first time to go 1-0 up in the second set, Nirupama was facing break points at 30-40 in the second game, but she went on to save it after a few deuces. After this, games 3, 4, 6, and 8 all went to deuces, but Nirupama came out on top every time.

Nirupama plays Kimberly Po of USA in the second round. Po defeated Mariam Ramon of Spain 6-3, 6-4 in the first round. Stephanie Foretz and Kerry-Anne Guse are the other winners from the Nirupama's bracket.