Monday, June 19, 2006

Sania moves up to 38th rank

The advent of the grass court season has witnessed Sania Mirza's resurgence with the Indian teenager jumping three places to 38th in the latest WTA rankings on Monday.

The 19-year-old, who had been afflicted by injuries and slipped to 41 after her low-key performances on clay courts, registered her first third-round appearance of the year at the USD 200,000 DFS Classic in Birmingham last week.

US-based Shikha Uberoi maintained her 165th position while Delhi-based Ankita Bhambri slid 14 places to 363rd and her younger sister Sanaa came down crashing 48 places to 570th. Seasoned Rushmi Chakravarthi dropped 11 spots to 453rd.

There was some good news in the men's section with Rohan Bopanna gaining 15 spots to be placed 252nd and to be the highest ranked Indian on the ATP Tour.

Bopanna came through three rounds of qualifying to earn a first round main draw date with world number one Roger Federer at Halle, Germany, last week.The 26-year-old went down in straight sets but earned the biggest pay cheque of his career of Rs. 3.5 lakh.

Prakash Amritraj is at 285th spot while Karan Rastogi had the next best ranking of 330.

Harsh Mankad slid 28 rungs to be at 394.

In the doubles, Leander Paes (15th) and Mahesh Bhupathi (24th) retained their last week's rankings.

No comments: