The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Tara Iyer makes final

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Sep 08, 2007
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Sport - Tennis

Tara Iyer makes final

TASHKENT: Tara Iyer stepped closer to the Australian Open wild card as she made the singles final of the $100,000 Asian tennis championship here on Friday.

The 19-year-old Tara revealed her strength of character as she bounced back from an indifferent start to beat the fifth-seeded Xin-Yun Han of China 2-6, 7-6(3), 6-4.

The sixth-seeded Tara will challenge the home favourite, the 154th ranked top seed Iroda Tulyaganova, who was ranked as high as No.16 in the world in 2002.

Tara follows on the footsteps of Sania Mirza who had made the final of the Asian Championship in 2004. Despite losing the final to Na Li of China, Sania went on to get the Australian Open wild card as the Chinese had improved her ranking sufficiently to get a direct entry into the first Grand Slam of the season.

Even Tulyaganova, who had reached the third round of the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon at her prime, but could not qualify into the last three Grand Slams this season, could make it direct next year into the Australian Open by the strength of her improved game and ranking.

Thus, Tara can play freely without worrying about the wild card or the winner’s purse of $7,200.

Meanwhile, there was some disappointment for the second-seeded Indian doubles pair of Ashutosh Singh and Vivek Shokeen as they lost to the top-seeded Murad Inoyatov of Uzbekistan and Alexey Kedriouk of Kazakhstan. The Uzbek-Kazakh combination won 6-2, 7-6(4) to pocket $3,100 while the runner-up had to be content with $1,800.

Quite interestingly, Rohan Bopanna in partnership with Kedriouk, had lost the doubles final in 2005 against Denis Istomin and Murad Inoyatov, who went on to defend the title last year.

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