Sania in singles final

Indian junior Sania Mirza stormed into the final of the Grade II Hong Kong Open junior tennis championships with a hard-fought victory over Kristina Czafikova of Slovakia on Friday.

Sania, seeded second in the tournament, won a marathon semi-final match, edging out third seed Czafikova 7-6(9-7), 3-6, 6-4.

In the 150 minutes' semi-final, the Indian girl was trailing 0-5 in the first set. But once she settled down, she never looked back. Not only did she narrow the lead but went on to win the first set via the tie-breaker at 9-7. The first set lasted nearly 70 minutes as both the players indulged in long rallies, often rushing to the net.

However, the Hyderabadi lass caved in in the second set to the far superior court-craft of Czafikova and lost the set at 3-6.

But in the third and final set, Sania played like a champion as her first serve brooked no response from the athletic rival. She led 5-2 and won the set and match at 6-4.

In the process, Sania avenged her defeat against Kristina at the Osaka Open tournament, held last week.

Sania will take on top-seed and world No. 5 Matea Mezak of Croatia in the final. Mezak defeated fourth seed Hanna Nooni of Sweden 7-5, 6-3 in the other semi-final.

Sania was in line for a double after making it to the final in the doubles event along with Mezak. However, the pair went down 3-6, 6-2, 1-6 to the second-seeded Slovak-Czech pair of Czafikova and Andrea Hlackova in the final.

Earlier, Sania and Mezak had entered the final with an impressive 6-2, 6-0 victory over the third seeded pair of Hanna Nooni of Sewden and Angela Maria Piedrahita of the United States.

In the boys' doubles section, second seeds Jaco Mathew and Joseph Victorino of the Philippines lost in the quarter-finals to the eight seeds Gyorgy Balazs of Hungary and Lars Poerschke of Germany 5-7, 2-6 while Nishank Mishra and Anuwat Dalodom of Thailand lost to the seventh seeded pair of Artem Sitak of Russia and Patrick Gross of Germany 0-6, 5-7 in a second round match.