Williams sisters win 4th Australian Open doubles title

The mighty Williams sisters — Venus and Serena — won the women’s doubles title at the Austrlian Open for the fourth time on Friday after beating Zimbabwe’s Cara Black and America’s Liezel Huber 6-4, 6-3 in the final.

Venus and Serena are the reigning Aussie Open champs, having beaten Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova and Japanese Ai Sugiyama in last year’s women’s doubles finale. The super sisters now own 11 major doubles titles, three of which came last year.

Bhupathi-Sania pull out of mixed doubles

Mahesh Bhupathi and Sania Mirza will not defend their mixed doubles title at the Australian Open due to a calf injury to the former.

Bhupathi suffered the injury on Monday while practicing and aggravated it during Thursday’s men’s doubles first round match which he lost along with his Belarusian partner Max Mirnyi.

According to Bhupathi, the doctor has advised him at least 10-day rest resulting in them pulling out of the first Grand Slam of the season.

With this pull out, Bhupathi’s campaign is over at the Australian Open.

Sania Mirza is already out of singles but her challenge is still alive in the women’s doubles event.

Sania loses first round at Australian Open

Sania Mirza crashed out of the singles event of the Australian Open after suffering a straight-set defeat in the first round at the hands 26th seed Aravane Rezai of France.

The unseeded Indian lost her opening round 4-6 2-6 in one hour and nine minutes to her world number 27 opponent at Melbourne Park.

The first set could have gone either way with both the players getting an equal number of opportunities to break serve.

However, Sania missed all the four breakpoints while the French rode on one break to shoot into the lead.

In the second set, Sania got four chances to break her rival but could convert just one while she dropped her serve thrice.

Now Sania would look to do well in the women’s doubles event where she has been seeded 10th along with her Spanish partner Virginia Ruano Pascual.

Their first round opponents are Yayuk Basuki of Indonesia and Kimiko Date Krumm of Japan.