Sania-Ivan dig deep to make second mixed doubles final
MUMBAI: Sania Mirza and her Croatian partner Ivan Dodig sailed into the final of the mixed doubles at the Australian Open on Friday as they edged past the Australian pair of Samantha Stosur and Sam Groth 6-4, 2-6, 10-5 at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.
They will now face AmericanColombian duo Abigail Spears and Juan Sebastian Cabal in Sunday’s final. Spears and Cabal defeated Chris Guccione and Elina Svitolina 7-6(1), 6-2 in the other semifinal.
This is their second final as a pair. They had reached the French Open final in 2016 but lost to Leander Paes and Martina Hingis. Sania has previously won three mixed Slams. It was a dominant start from the second-seeded Indo-Croatian pair as they broke their opponents in the very first game of the match but then failed to hold serve to square things.
Sania and Dodig almost earned the break once again in the next game but Stosur and Groth won to take a 2-1 lead. Sania and Groth then held on to their respective serves before Dodig was broken yet again in the sixth game as the Australian duo led 4-2.
It was then that the Indo-Croatian pair hit top gear and broke the Aussies twice, before holding their serves, to win four consecutive games and take the first set.
However, much to the delight of the Australian crowd, Groth and Stosur stormed back in the match with a fighting show as Sania was twice broken on her serve.
Trailing 2-5 in the second set, Sania did manage to pull things back on her serve from 0-40 down to deuce, but followed it up with a double fault to gift away the set in just 31 minutes.
In the Super tiebreak, Sania won the match with her second serve as the pair wrapped it all up in 78 minutes to reach final.
You have to focus on your serve and that’s what we were trying in that Super tiebreak