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Leander qualifies for Australian Open

The Indians had mixed luck in the finals round of the Australian Open qualifiers today, with Leander Paes qualifying for the men's singles main draw and Nirupama Vaidyanathan losing the finals.

Leander Paes defeated Marcos Ondruska of South Africa, 7-6(4), 7-6(5) in an engrossing match that took two hours and hour minutes and never seemed to end. Paes played the big points better but Ondruska had a total of 98 points to Paes's 92 in the match. Peas served four aces at break points and had 42 winners as compared to 32 by Ondruska. And that's what made the difference in the end.

Leander Paes had Ondruska down 15-40 in the first game of the first set, and then soldiered through in the fourth chance he got to break. But Paes managed nine unforced errors in the first four games. In the fourth game, he faced three break attempts, the last following a double fault at deuce and then finally let Ondruska through, to tie it up 2-2. Ondruska was serving well. He managed 20 of 21 first serves at one point. But he won only 13 of them and Leander broke him once.

At 3-4, Leander faced double break points at 15-40. The game reached the fifth deuce when Paes doublefaulted again to give Ondruska a fourth chance to break. Unforced errors from Ondruska and Paes brought up the fifth break point, which Ondruska finally converted.

Ondruska, at 5-3, was serving and had things going for him when he tripped up at set point, double-faulting.

An unforced error from Paes, and it was again set point. Then Ondruska slipped up yet again and it was deuce. An ace from Ondruska, a winner from Paes... It went on for eight deuces with five set points for Ondruska and three break points for Paes. Paes finally pulled it off to bring it back on serve at 4-5. At 5-6, Paes had to go through three deuces before sending it to a tiebreaker. In the tiebreak, Peas was down 0-2, then he won six of the seven points to go up 6-3 and finish off the set on the second set point, 7-6(4).

Things looked considerably better in terms of errors in the second set as Paes, who had made 22 unforced errors in the first set, made only nine in the second. It went with serve at first but the fifth game took an interesting twist. Paes was down 0-30 after a double fault, but came back with two aces. He then faced another break attempt. He held the serve with an ace. At 3-3, Paes again faced three break points and the last was at deuce when he double-faulted. Paes fired an ace to get out of trouble. By this time, Paes had served five aces, four of which were on break points. There were no breaks in the set, though the games continued to be well contested. In the tiebreaker, Paes got the key mini-break to go up 6-5 and completed the match at the first match point.

For Nirupama Vaidyanathan it was heartbreak as she went down to Kerry-Anne Guse 6-3, 0-6, 1-1 (retired). After dropping serve the first time and falling behind 0-2, Nirupama started dominating Kerry-Ann in the first set, breaking her in the 3rd, 5th and 9th games to wrap it up comfortably at 6-3.

Then suddenly something happened, as she was broken three times in a row in the second set and lost the set 0-6. In the third set, Nirupama held serve rather comfortably and took Guse to about five deuces, including a break point at 1-0. Then, when Guse was to serve AD in, Nirupama took an injury break for 10 minutes. They played that point and it was tied at 1-1 when Nirupama retired.