Paes in mixed doubles final
Leander Paes has moved into the mixed doubles final and the semis of the men's doubles event at the US Open.
Fifth-seeded Paes and Cara Black of Zimbabwe pipped the Swede-Russian pair of Jonas Bjorkman and Nadia Petrova 6-4 6-4 in the semifinals of the mixed double event to set up a summit clash against Liezel Huber of the United States and Briton Andy Murray.Huber and Murray beat the American pair of Jill Craybas and Eric Butorac 6-3 6-4 in their semifinal encounter.
Paes also earned a semifinal place in the men's doubles event with Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy after defeating an error prone Swede-Finnish pair of Robert Lindstedt and Jarko Nieminen 6-3 6-7 (2) 6-3 in the quarterfinal that lasted over two hours.
Paes-Dlouhy will now fight it out with Argentine pair of Maximo Gonzalez Juan Monaco, who beat Brazilian-Serbian duo of Bruno Soares and Dusan Vemic 6-2 6-7 (3) 6-3, for a place in the men's doubles final.
In the doubles quarters, Paes-Dlouhy cashed in on mistakes of their opponents as Lindstedt-Nieminen wasted three breakpoints in the first set while Paes-Dlouhy converted the one and only chance to go ahead.
In the second set, both the teams converted two of the three chances but Paes and Dlouhy faltered in the tie-breaker allowing the rival team to stretch the issue to the third set.
In the decisive final set, Lindstedt-Nieminen once again came a cropper squandering four breakpoints while the Indo-Czech duo managed to convert one of the three chances to clinch the issue.
Mahesh Bhupathi has already crashed out of both the men's doubles and mixed doubles events.
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