Devvarman and Mirza to play for gold in Delhi
India’s Somdev Devvarman and Sania Mirza will contest the finals of the men’s and women’s singles at the Commonwealth Games tennis tournament in Delhi.
While the decision of some of the top international tennis stars to give the Delhi Games a miss – world No. 4 Andy Murray, top-ten player Sam Stosur, Australian men’s No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt and Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis among them – has taken some of the gloss off the competition, for the players left this may just be the biggest match of their tennis careers.
World No. 97 ranked Devvarman - who won his way through qualifying and into the French Open this year and also played in the US Open main draw (suffering first round losses on both occasions) will head into the gold medal tennis match buoyed by the local crowd and should rightly take favouritism for the match against little-known Australian Greg Jones.
After all, his opponent is ranked as the world No. 234 and has spent most of his year floating around on the satellite tour.
But while Jones may have an underwhelming CV so far, the Commonwealth Games have brought out the best in the 21-year-old, who denied fellow Australian Peter Luczak a chance to play for gold with a 6-7, 6-4, 6-2 win in his previous match.
That near three hour match may have taken its toll on Jones – we’ll know more after he plays Devvarman on Sunday – but with at least a silver medal guaranteed, the Aussie youngster will surely have already surpassed even his own expectations in India.
Luczak will take on another Australian teammate, Matt Ebden, in the bronze medal match.
Mirza reached the final of the women’s singles with a 1-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Australia’s Olivia Rogowska. She will play top seed Anastasia Rodionova of Australia in the gold medal match.
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