India's hopes of a gold medal in the women's singles tennis event at the Asian Games were dashed when Sania Mirza settled for a bronze after losing to third seed Akgul Amanmuradova in the semi-finals.
Sania lost the long-drawn-out battle, that lasted two hours and 49 minutes, against the big-serving Uzbek rival 7-6 (7), 3-6, 4-6 by committing a number of forehand errors to exit from the competition.
In the other semi-final, China's Peng Shui shocked top seed Kimiko Date-Krumm of Japan 7-6 (6), 3-6, 6-2 to advance to the gold medal match against Amanmuradova.
Both the losing semifinalists, Sania and Date-Krumm, won bronze medals as there is no play-off for third place.
Sania committed five double faults when she was serving for the first set at 5-4. Later she led 6-2 in the tie-break before it became 6-6 before she finally clinched it 9-7.
The set lasted 74 minutes and drained the Indian.
In the second set, the hard-serving Uzbek broke her for a 4-3 lead and then surged to take it 6-3.
The decisive break in the final set that went with serve, came in the 10th game when Sania muffed three forehands to be down 0-40.
She tried to get out of the situation with an inside-out forehand to finish a rally but only ended up putting the ball into the tram-lines and lost the set and the match.
Sania, looking glum, said later that her rival was the better player on the day.
"We played for an hour and 45 minutes and it could have gone either way. She was the better player on the day. Her main strength is her serves which she mixes up well," Sania, ranked 166th on the women's circuit, said.
Sania did not agree that the five double faults she served, including four in the opening game, made a difference to the result.
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