Sania Mirza added another milestone to her growing list of records by breaking into top-30 in world rankings on Monday, thanks to her amazing run in recent weeks on the US hardcourts.
The 20-year-old Indian made it to the quarterfinals at the 1.3-million-dollar Acura Classic women’s tennis event in San Diego last week, which enabled her to move up one place to 30th on the latest WTA Tour ranking list.
The Hyderabadi girl lost in straight sets to eventual winner and world no 2 Maria Sharapova, but the performance fetched her 110 points, which improved on her career-best ranking.
Also making a splash was Rohan Bopanna who became the first Indian male player since Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi to break into the top-100 in doubles rankings.
Sania becomes the first Indian, man or woman, to be in the top-30 after Ramesh Krishnan who was ranked 23 in 1987. Sania, whose career earnings now stand at US$ 827,476, also retained her doubles ranking of 26 despite a first-round loss at San Diego.
In the $600,000 East West Bank Classic at Los Angeles this week, Sania faces a qualifier in the first round.
Sania, placed in the second quarter of the 64-size draw, has the prospect of clashing with former world no 1 Martina Hingis, seeded seventh for the week. Sharapova, the top seed, was also in the same half of the draw that also featured number 9 Nadia Petrova.
Bopanna, who won a third successive title in Spain with Pakistan's Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi on Sunday, jumped nine places to be ranked 92 in ATP doubles individual rankings.
Bopanna and Qureshi added the title at $125,000 ATP Challenger event in Segovia, Spain, to their triumphs at Manchester and Nottingham on grass on the previous weeks.
Bopanna dropped seven places in singles to be 222 but was still the highest ranked Indian. Prakash Amritraj at 268, a slip of six rungs, and Karan Rastogi at 340 were the next best Indians.
US-based Indian Sunit-ha Rao leaped 25 places to 218 while Shikha Uberoi (33), Rushmi Chakravarthi (384), Tara Iyer (410), Isha Lakhani (442) and Ankita Bhambri (496) were the other Indian women in the top-500.
