India's ace tennis player Sania Mirza, seeded second, continued her good show as she upset top-seed Frenchwoman Julie Coin 7-6 (7/5), 6-4 to clinch the $50,000 ITF Lexington Challenger title. With this win, the 22-year-old rose three places to 80th in the latest WTA singles rankings. However, she dropped 10 places to 49th in the WTA doubles list.
Sania kept her cool in the scintillating final in front of sizeable Indian community as she sealed the first set via tie-breaker after squandering a 5-2 lead and facing 5-all. Mirza had a great start as she broke Julie Coin in the very first game of the match, and also consolidated the break to take an early 2-0 lead.
Coin, however, got herself back in the groove by clinching the third game and then went on to break Mirza's serve to level the proceedings at two games apiece. Both of them held their serve till the eighth game of the opening set when Coin broke Sania to gain 5-3 lead.
Mirza was in no mood to surrender as she fought her way back by holding on to two under-pressure service games to force the opening set into a tie-break. Coin gained a crucial 5-2 lead in the tie-breaker but it was Sania's day as she came back hard to win four points in a row to seal the first set 7-5 in her favour.
Top-seed Coin fought hard as she took an early break to go ahead 2-1 in the second set which was as exciting as the first but Sania levelled the scores to break straight back. Sania broke Coin for a 5-3 lead and served for the match, but was broken back by Julie. However Sania broke the Coin serve in a marathon tenth game to register an impressive win.
Interestingly, this was only the second ITF $50,000 event that Sania had participated in, the first being way back in 2003 when she was still making a name for herself on the pro tour.
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