Date:22/07/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/07/22/stories/2008072260461800.htm

Sport - Tennis

Sania relishes Asian surge

New Delhi: She might have been outshone by China’s Zheng Jie and Thailand’s Tamarine Tanasugarn at the recently-concluded Wimbledon Championships but Sania Mirza is proud to be a part of the Asian surge at the international level.

The Asian players did extremely well at the third Grand Slam of the year as not only Zheng and Tamarine brought glory to the continent by making the semifinal and quarterfinal grades, Cheng-Peng Hsieh and Tsung Hua Yang of Chinese Taiwan won the junior doubles title.

They had also won the Australian Open doubles title.

Powerful Zheng

Zheng made the world No. 1 Ana Ivanovic bite dust en route to her historic feat and became the first player of her country to reach singles semifinals and Tamarine defeated world No. 3 Jelena Jankovic.

Also there are 11 players, led by Sania, from Asia figuring in top-100 players in the WTA ranking charts.

Sania indeed is happy with the rise of Asian players at international level.

“This trend only endorses my long-standing view that tennis today is a truly global sport. There are more than 200 countries playing serious tennis and the next champion can come out of any of these 200 countries,” she said. — PTI