Sania's date with Venus

Sania Mirza has earned a high profile date with five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams in the 2nd round of the Family Circle Cup in Charleston, South Carolina.
The two have met on a couple of occasions in the past with Venus (no surprise) leading the head to head to battle 2-0. Their previous meeting was in the 3rd round at the Australian Open in 2008, with Mirza pushing Williams all the way, losing out in a couple of hard fought sets 6-7, 4-6.

Mirza overcame Bulgarian teenager Sesil Karatantcheva 6-4, 6-4 in 76 minutes after a rather scratchy performance, to be expected from a player who has been struggling for form in singles competition this year.

The Indian ace, who came into this match with a 7-6 record in 2009 till date, has failed to light up the tour despite getting off to a good start with a final appearance in the Pattaya Open in February.

In a bit of a see-saw first set, Sania served rather poorly, only getting 52% of her first serves in. Karatantcheva made Sania pay for missing all those first serves, winning 9 of 16 points of Sania's second serve, and setting up 6 break opportunities for herself. And though Sania did drop her serve on two occasions, she did break the Bulgarian's serve thrice to close out a tight opening set.

Though her first serve did continue to struggle right through the second set, Sania only conceded the one break point in it. Karatantcheva did however take advantage of it, but was broken twice by Mirza to seal the win.

Interestingly the two girls had played once before, with 14-year old Karatantcheva beating 17-year old Mirza in three close sets in 2004. Today, Mirza did square-up that old record!