Sania, Leander in French Open mixed doubles semis

Paris, June 2 (IANS) India's tennis stars Sania Mirza and Leander Paes reached the French Open mixed doubles semi-finals here on Thursday.

Sania and her mixed doubles partner Ivan Dodig beat Jan Chan and Max Mirnyi to move into the semi-finals of the French Open tennis tournament The second seeds won the contest in the tie-breaker with a 6-1, 3-6, 10-6 on Court 2.

Later in the day, Paes and Martina Hingis overwhelmed fifth seeds Bruno Soares and Elena Vesnina 6-4, 6-3.

The Indo-Swiss pair were dominant throughout the match, using their vast experience to good effect, breaking their Brazil-Russian opponent four times in 11 attempts.

They were broken just once in five tries. Paes-Hingis won 60 of the total 111 total points played.

Earlier, Sania and her Croatian partner were able to get into their stride from the beginning and pocketed the first game quite easily against the Chinese Taipei-Belarusian pair.

They then broke their opponents to move ahead 2-0 in the first set. And though Chan and Mirnyi tried catching up, the Indo-Croatian pair remained ahead.

Before long it was 5-0 and Sania-Ivan ensured there were no hiccups as they pocketed the opening set 6-1.

Jan-Max scripted a turnaround in the second set. The Chinese Taipei-Belarusian pair rallied back into the contest by pocketing three back to back games to march to a 4-1 lead.

Sania-Ivan broke back to reduce the margin to 3-5 but Jan-Max sealed the set by winning their service game to stretch the match into a deciding tie-breaker.

The Sania-Ivan pair was brilliant in the tie breaker and had things under control from the very beginning. They led 8-5 at one stage and finally bought the shutters down at 10-6.

--IANS

sam/dg