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ShareMumbai: Blaz Kavcic is to blame. The Slovenian defeated Somdev Devvarman in the final round of men’s qualifying and denied the nation of a billion and more Indians the chance to dream about someone else other than pinning their hopes on the time-tested trio of Sania Mirza, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi.
The argument is ridiculous but that, in effect, is the sad truth of Indian tennis. Once again, we rely on the old warhorses to bring us Grand Slam glory and be cautiously optimistic about an increasingly erratic Sania.
But if the world No.56 has to prove that she isn’t a spent force who’s thinking of hanging up her racquet already, then 2010 Australian Open would be the best platform. For starters, the Plexicushion surface suits her power-oriented game and it is on carpet that she beat Aravane Rezai —the 26th seed against whom she opens early on Monday — in Kolkata at the 2006 Sunfeast Open.
Rezai got back at her last year on the clay-court in Madrid but this is a new year and Sania has been claiming that she is injury-free and raring to go. If she succeeds in crossing the French hurdle, it will either be Belarussian Olga Govortsova or Angelique Kerber of Germany.
Sania enjoys a 2-1 advantage over Govortsova and hasn’t met Kerber before so chances of her reaching Round 3 and equalling her Australian Open record in singles isn’t a far-fetched dream.
She is also the defending champion in mixed doubles and that may provide her some confidence in singles. Paes and Bhupathi have won all the three other majors in their illustrious career and men’s doubles trophy at the Australian is the only one which has eluded them so far.
Paes and his partner Lukas Dlouhy have a reasonably good warm up to the hard court Slam as they ended runner-up at the Brisbane event though suffered early exit at Auckland event. Bhupathi and Max Mirnyi of Belarus, his new partner, are yet to play together again but there won’t be any problem in adjusting as they have paired before and have been successful.
