JOIN USPaes, Bhupathi make progress
Bhupathi and Mark Knowles of Bahamas, seeded third, took an hour and 15 minutes to prevail over Americans Jesse Levine and Ryan Sweeting 7-5, 6-2 in the men’s doubles second round on Saturday. They will face unseeded Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei and Dudi Sela of Israel in the pre-quarterfinals.
Bhupathi then turned up with his new mixed doubles partner Liezel Huber of US to outclass another American pair Jill Craybas and Eric Butorac 6-3, 6-3 in the second round. The top seeded Indo-American pair showed fine touch as they converted all their four break points to wrap-up the match in 54 minutes.
Paes and Lukas Dlouhy of Czech Republic, seeded fourth sailed past Spain’s Nicolas Almagro and Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo 6-2, 6-3 in the second round men’s double’s match. The French Open champions will now face Austrian Julian Knowle and Jurgen Melzer. Paes won the doubles title here in 2006 with Martin Damm and reached the finals last year with Dlouhy. Paes, partnering Cara Black of Zimbabwe in mixed doubles, defeated Italian Flavia Pennetta and Dusan Vemic of Serbia 6-4, 6-4 in 74 minutes in the second round. They will meet Australian Rennae Stubbs and Sweden’s Robert Lindsted.
Juniors’ chance
As US Open tennis championship enters its second week, it’s the turn of Indian juniors, led by Yuki Bhambri, to dig deep into their arsenal.
While the junior Australian Open champion Yuki played American Jordan Cox in the boys’ singles first round on Sunday, Sudanwa Sitaram, other Indian in the draw, will meet American Alexander Domijan.
US Open results
Results (third round, prefix denotes seeding): Men: 14-Tommy Robredo (Esp) bt 21-James Blake (US) 7-6(7-2), 6-4, 6-4; John Isner (US) bt 5-Andy Roddick (US) 7-6(7-3), 6-3, 3-6, 5-7, 7-6(7-5); 10-Fernando Verdasco (Esp) bt 20-Tommy Haas (Ger) 3-6, 7-5, 7-6(10-8), 1-6, 6-4; 12-Robin Soderling (Swe) bt 22-Sam Querrey (US) 6-2, 7-5, 6-7(8-6), 6-1; 8-Nikolay Davydenko (Rus) bt Marco Chiudinelli (Sui) 6-4, 7-5, 7-5; 4-Novak Djokovic (Serb) bt Jesse Witten (US) 6-7(7-2), 6-3, 7-6(7-2), 6-4; 1-Roger Federer (Sui) bt 31-Lleyton Hewitt (Aus) 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4; 15-Radek Stepanek (Cze) bt 23-Philipp Kohlschreiber (Ger) 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3.
Women: Petra Kvitova (Cze) bt 1-Dinara Safina (Rus) 6-4, 2-6, 7-6(7-5); 9-Caroline Wozniacki (Den) bt 24-Sorana Cirstea (Rom) 6-3, 6-2; Kateryna Bondarenko (Ukr) bt Anastasia Rodionova (Rus) 7-6(7-4), 6-4; 6-Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) bt Shahar Peer (Isr) 7-5, 6-1; Yanina Wickmayer (Bel) bt Sara Errani (Ita) 6-3, 6-4; Gisela Dulko (Arg) bt Yaroslava Shvedova (Kaz) 6-3, 6-4; Melanie Oudin (US) bt 29-Maria Sharapova (Rus) 3-6, 6-4, 7-5; 13-Nadia Petrova (Rus) bt 21-Zheng Jie (Chn) 6-4, 6-1.