Incheon: Sania Mirza and Saketh Myneni defeated Chinese Taipei pair of Hsien Yin Peng-Hao Ching Chan 6-4, 6-3 and clinched a mixed doubles gold at the 17th Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea.
This was India’s 7th medal in tennis at the Incheon Asiad. The Mirza, Myneni duo put up a solid show and outplayed the top seeded Chinese duo in straight sets.
This is Sania Mirza’s third consecutive Asian Games mixed doubles final appearance. In 2006, she had won a gold with Leander Paes. The Indian followed that up with a silver medal in 2010 with Vishnu Vardhan and has now won a gold with Saketh Myneni at Incheon.
On Monday, the Hyderabadi tennis sensation had expressed her happiness on India’s solid show at the Asian Games.
Earlier, the Indian pair of Sania Mirza and Prarthana Thombare settled for a bronze after losing their women’s doubles semifinal to Chinese Taipei’s Chin Wei Chan and Su Wei Hsiehin in the Asian Games, on Saturday.
The fifth seeded Indian combo put up a brave fight before going down 6-7 (1-7) 6-2 10-4 to the Chinese Taipei duo, seeded second, at the Yeorumul Tennis Courts here.
Sania and Prarthana took the courts and toiled hard for an hour and 35 minutes but at the end failed to make it to the finals. Both the pairs fought hard in the opening frame to take the set to a tiebreaker.
The Taipei duo finally managed to win the set after nearly an hour’s play. The Indians, however, came back strongly in the second set and managed to prevail over their higher ranked opponents in just 32 minutes.
But the deciding set turned out to be a cake-walk for the Taipei combination as they took barely 10 minutes to seal it 10-4 and draw the curtains on the tie.
