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Top-seeded Sania Mirza quelled a late challenge from American wildcard Laura Granville to enter the quarter finals of the $75,000 International Tennis Federation (ITF) Vancuover Open according to information received here on Friday.

Competing in only the third ITF event of her career, the Indian ace defeated Granville 6-2, 7-5.

Sania will now take on local favourite Rebecca Marino in the last-eight stage.

Rebecca stunned eighth seed Australian Olivia Rogowska 7-5, 7-6 (0) to make the quarter finals.

Laura had advanced to the second round after her Japanese opponent Aiko Nakamura conceded the match when leading 4-3 in the final set.

Sania had won the ITF Lexington Challenger recently.

Her year had started on a high note after winning the Australian Open mixed doubles with compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi in January. She then reached the final of the Pattaya Open in February where she lost to Vera Zvonareva. However, she couldn’t make much of a mark in the French Open or Wimbledon.

She is currently playing hardcourt events in North America as preparation for the US Open, which begins later this month.

Indian tennis sensation Sania Mirza moved up a place to 85th on the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) rankings in women’s singles while dropping one place to 42nd in the doubles.

Yuki Bhambri continues to take giant strides leap-frogging 111 places to 531st position.
The 17-year-old junior Australian Open champion won his third successive International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournament at the Delhi Lawn Tennis Association (DLTA) complex earlier this month before his 17-match unbeaten streak was halted in the second of the two back-to-back tournaments last week.
Yuki had won his maiden ITF title in the last week of April and went on to add another within a week. The two ITF titles had catapulted Yuki to 661st position, a jump of 897 places.
Among other Indian players, Prakash Amritraj fell 95 places to 254th while Somdev Devvarman slipped three places to 135.
In the men doubles’ rankings, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi are static at sixth and eighth places respectively.
Indian tennis’ poster girl Sania recently got engaged gets engaged to childhood friend Sohrab Mirza at a plush hotel in Hyderababd, away from the prying eyes of the media.
The glittery ceremony was attended by a few special and close invitees including Indian tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi, south movie star Chiranjeevi among others.
Sania’s father Imran had earlier made it clear that Sania would continue playing the game after her engagement and the wedding would take place a couple of years later.
Sania, India’s first female player to win a Grand Slam title, is likely to leave for America later this month to participate in the US Open and other competitions.

Sania Mirza celebrated her engagement to childhood friend Mohammed Sohrab Mirza by winning the $50,000 Lexington Challenger ITF women’s tennis event in Kentucky on Sunday.

The 22-year-old Hyderabadi girl, who was returning to the courts after her betrothal earlier this month, made light of top seed Julie Coin of France for a 7-6 (5), 6-4 victory in the summit clash.

It was Sania’s first appearance in a Challenger tournament in more than four years and, interestingly, her maiden triumph at this level although she has a Grand Slam in mixed doubles, a WTA Tour title and a dozen wins at the $10,000 level under her belt.

Coin had made rapid strides over the last 12 months to be ranked at 62, but Sania, who was ranked as high as 27 in 2007, proved to be too hot to handle for the French woman. And a large contingent of partisan, diaspora fans gave Sania the ‘home advantage’.

“Everyone here hits the ball and moves well (in Challengers). But winning is about having the experience and doing it consistently.

“My biggest strength is that no one can read my forehand… I can hit it anywhere,” Sania said after her win.

A fall-out of her victory was that Sania had to miss out on playing the qualifiers of the $700,000 WTA Tour Premier event in Stanford over the weekend.

In fact, the tournament had awarded Sania a wild card but that was overruled by the WTA as she had already received three main draw wild cards this year, the maximum allowed under the rules, for events in Dubai, Indian Wells and Miami.

She was also forced to withdraw from doubles main draw due to an injury to her partner Meghann Shaughnessy of the US.

Sania squandered a 5-2 lead in the first set tie-breaker but Coin, after levelling the scores at 5-5, failed to take advantage of a weak second serve from Sania and netted her return.

The 26-year-old French went up 2-0 with an early break in the second. But Sania hit back with a double break to go up 5-3, and although she again dropped serve, the Indian uncorked a third break of serve to seal the match.

The win saw Sania move up three places to 80 in the WTA Tour rankings. However, she dropped 10 spots to 49th in the doubles chart.

On the ATP Tour, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi held on to their sixth and eighth spot respectively in the men’s doubles rankings.

Sania Mirza’s days of singledom come to an end tonight with the Indian tennis ace all set to get engaged to childhood friend Sohrab Mirza in a private ceremony here.

Sohrab is an MBA student and son of a city-based businessman.

The 22-year-old Sania and Sohrab (23) will exchange rings at 8.30pm at a posh city hotel tonight.

A second man has been detained after professing his love for Indian tennis star Sania Mirza at her Hyderabad home.
Ms Mirza is to be engaged to a family friend on Friday

Ajay Singh Yadav told the police that he had been in love with Ms Mirza – ranked 85th in the world – for five years and wanted to marry her.

On Wednesday another man, Mohammad Ashraf, was arrested after threatening to kill himself if Ms Mirza did not marry him. Both men are in custody.

The tennis player is to be engaged to a family friend on Friday.

Security has been tightened at Sania Mirza’s bungalow in the upmarket Banjara Hills area of Hyderabad.

The police said Ajay Singh, from Noida in Uttar Pradesh, arrived in the city in the morning and rushed to Banjara Hills, saying he wanted to meet the tennis player.

When he did not go away despite warnings, the police took him in to custody.

“I have loved her for the last five years, and want to marry her,” Mr Singh said, remaining cool and composed.

Based on an identity card he carried with him, the police identified him as a student at the Dronacharya College of Engineering in Noida.

It was a repeat of Wednesday’s drama, in which Mohammed Ashraf, an engineering student from Kerala, tried to enter Ms Mirza’s house and threatened to commit suicide if her engagement was not cancelled.

Mr Ashraf, a resident of Manjeri in Malappuram, said he wanted to “propose” to Ms Mirza. He said he fell in love with her two years ago, when he watched her playing tennis in Bangalore.

The Banjara Hills Police charged Mr Ashraf with offences including trespass, criminal intimidation and uttering words or making gestures outraging the modesty of a woman. He was sent before a local court, which remanded him in custody for 14 days.
Ajay Singh will also appear in court and be sent to the same jail where Mr Ashraf is lodged.

A young Indian man turned up at the home of tennis star Sania Mirza and threatened to kill himself if the tennis player did not marry him. Mohammad Ashraf told Imran Mirza, Sania’s father, that the tennis star could not marry anyone else as she “was born for me”. He also demanded that her engagement with family friend Sohrab Mirza, scheduled for Friday, be cancelled. An alarmed Imran Mirza called the police who have taken him into custody. He has been produced in court and remanded for a fortnight. Mirza, 22, is one of the top ranking players. She ranks 85 in the world. ‘Threatening’ In his complaint to the police, Mr Mirza says Mr Ashraf claims to be in love with the tennis star ever since he saw her playing a match in Bangalore two years ago. Mr Mirza has also complained that the youth was sending text messages and making threatening calls to his daughter for some time. Mr Ashraf arrived at Ms Mirza’s home in Hyderabad city’s upmarket home in Banjara Hills area on Tuesday evening accompanied by his friend Devadeesh Mohanty. “How can you engage Sania to another person when she was born for me?” Mr Ashraf is reported to have asked the tennis player’s father. “He was threatening to commit suicide if Sania did not marry him,” Mr Mirza told the police. The two men have been arrested and have been charged with trespass and creating a nuisance. Mr Ashraf has been identified as a civil engineer from Bangalore. Police say they have contacted Bangalore police to find out whether Mr Ashraf is mentally sound.

A second-round loss at the Wimbledon championships cost Sania Mirza seven places in the WTA singles ranking as the Indian slipped to 85 but maintained her 37th position in the doubles list. A failed bid at Wimbledon also affected Somdev Devvarman’s and Prakash Amrittraj’s rankings as the former lost three places to be 132 and latter went down by five spots to be at 159. Somdev had lost his first qualifying round and Prakash faltered in the third and final round. Mahesh Bhupathi gained a place to be at eighth in the men’s doubles ranking courtesy a semifinal appearance at the All England Club and Leander Paes maintained his sixth position despite making a shock first round exit.

Leander Paes and his partner Cara Black defeated Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza to advance to the mixed doubles quarterfinals of Wimbledon Championships in London.

Top seeded Paes and Zimbabwean Black won 6-2 6-7 (2) 6-3 in the two-hour-and-seven-minute third-round contest, which was the first between the two pairs, on Monday night.

Paes and Black, who won the US Open mixed doubles title last year, were clearly the better pair in a rare match and also took advantage of the unforced errors committed by their opponents.

Thirteenth seeds Bhupathi and Sania committed nine double faults as compared to just one by their opponents though the all-Indian pair sent down more number of aces (6 to 3).
Paes and Black got as many as eight break points in the first set out of which they converted two to win it in 35 minutes.

Already out of singles competition, Sania Mirza’s doubles campaign also ended after she and her partner Chia-Jung Chuang suffered a straight set loss to Alla Kudryavtseva and Monica Niculescu in the second round of the Wimbledon Championships here on Saturday.

The 15th seeded Indo-Taipei pair lost 2-6, 3-6 to the unseeded Russian-Romanian combination.

Sania and Chia had their chances but failed to grab on those. Out of seven break points they got they could convert just one and paid the price.

Sania’s singles campaign was cut short in the second round by her friend Sorana Cirstea.

The Indian would now look to put up a better show in the mixed doubles event as she has reached the second round with compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi.

When she first arrived here — a starry-eyed little girl sporting a pony-tail, chaperoned by doting parents — to play in the girls’ singles championship all those years ago, Sania Mirza might have hardly imagined that the early part of her career as a professional tennis player would the play out the way it has — like a game of snakes and ladders.

In a few packed, emotionally-draining years since making a breakthrough at the Australian Open in January 2005, Sania, aged 22, has been through it all in a hurry — form slumps, a series of injuries, spectacular surges, controversies on and off the courts — and it is hardly a surprise that she often sounds like a world-weary veteran after being forced by circumstances to live her life in fast forward.
Annus horribilis

The year 2008 was something of an annus horribilis for Sania as she started the year at No.32 and ended it just inside the top 100, at 99. A first right wrist injury early in the year required surgery and forced her out of the game for several weeks. This was followed by another right wrist injury just before the Olympics.

In sport, as in life, sometimes it is necessary to plumb the depths to get a clear view of the way up. And Sania, still a long way from becoming the player she can be — the consistent winner that she wants to be in the process of discovering the limits of her own potential — did prove today that she is ready for the arduous task.

In a first round match of the 123rd Wimbledon tennis championships, on a cloudy, warm afternoon, Sania quickly overcame a mid-match slump as she beat Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany 6-2, 2-6, 6-2 to make her way to the second round.

After coming into the championship following her best tournament-run in a long, long time — a semifinal finish in the Aegon Classic on grass — the Indian star was unlikely to have been short on confidence. But after a dream start that saw her open up a 4-0 first set lead, Sania failed to impose herself on an opponent whose arsenal was mostly absent of heavy weaponry.

Then again, even if she blew hot and cold on the No.14 court where every single seat was taken and quite a few Indian fans had to crane their necks standing on the walkways to get a glimpse of the action, the woman from Hyderabad regrouped superbly after taking a break at the end of the second set.

Sania upped the ante on her serve, injected a strut into her court coverage and stepped in courageously for some rewarding fly-swatting on Anna-Lena’s second serves before finally blowing away her German opponent with an avalanche of blistering forehands.

Overall, it wasn’t the sort of performance that elicited a constant volley of Oohs and Aahs from the stands but it was a thoroughly professional demonstration of getting the job done on a big stage without too many missed heartbeats.

Last year, Sania, a bit rusty after coming in following a long injury-break, had failed to convert four matchpoints in the third set, losing to Martinez Sanchez, a qualifier in the second round.

This time, she plays Sorana Cirstea of Romania in the second round.

Not long after Sania returned to the locker room, the sport’s great summiteer got within six match victories of planting his Swiss flag on a peak no man has ever set foot on. Roger Federer, opening the proceedings on a brand new Centre Court in the absence of his friend and great rival Rafael Nadal, got past Yen-Hsun Lu from Chinese Taipei 7-5, 6-3, 6-2.

“Monday 1 p.m. It is a very privileged spot. Gets your heart beating, that’s for sure. He was a tough opponent,” said the five-time champion, after playing for the first time since winning a title — the French Open — that had long proved vanishingly elusive. “Rafa had dominated the championship (French) for so long. For me it was an unbelievable feeling,” said Federer.

Earlier in the day, Andreas Seppi of Italy upset James Blake (seeded 17) of the United States 7-5, 6-4, 7-6(5).

‘’This is something that has been my worst Slam, I don’t know why,” said a disappointed Blake. “Just didn’t feel like myself out there today.”