AGENCY
NEW HAVEN: Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza received a confidence booster ahead of the US Open Grand Slam tournament beginning tomorrow with a doubles title victory at the Connecticut Open with Monica Niculescu of Romania here.
Sania and Niculescu capped off their newly rekindled doubles partnership with their first title together with a straight set victory over the duo of Kateryna Bondarenko of Ukraine and Chuang Chia-Jung of Taiwan in the final. The Indo-Romanian pair won 7-5, 6-4 in the summit clash that lasted one hour and 30 minutes.
After pocketing a tough first set 7-5, Sania and Niculescu won a tightly contested second set 6-4 en route to lifting the trophy. The last time Sania and Niculescu partnered up was way back in 2010, where they joined forces to reach the quarterfinals at the Western and Southern Open.
They played that one tournament together before calling time on the partnership. Sania recently parted ways with Swiss Martina Hingis after a hugely successful partnership. She partnered with Barbora Strycova of Czech Republic at the Cincinnati Masters last week and won their debut tournament as a team, by defeating former partner Hingis and American Coco Vandeweghe. (PTI)
