Sania moves into French Open mixed doubles semis

Paris, June 2 (IANS) India's tennis star Sania Mirza 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 here on Thursday.

The second seeds won the contest in the tie-breaker with a 6-1, 3-6, 10-6 on Court 2.

From the beginning, Sania and her Croatian partner were able to get into their stride 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.