SANIA-STRYCOVA CLINCH PAN PACIFIC DOUBLES TITLE

Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and her Czech partner Barbora Strycova thrashed China's Chen Liang and Zhaoxuan Yang in straight sets to clinch the Pan Pacific women's doubles title here on Saturday.

In a lop-sided affair, the Indo-Czech pair defeated the Chinese 6-1, 6-1 in just 51 minutes.

Sania and Strycova, on Friday defeated unseeded pair of Canada's Gabriela Dabrowski and Spain's Maria Jose Martina Sanchez 4-6, 6-3, 10-5 in semi-final. Coming to the match, the Sania-Strycova pair started the proceedings on a positive note. In no time they took the lead and pushed back their opponents to bag the first set.

In the second set, the Chinese pair tried to bounce back but Sania-Strycova managed to hold them to bag the title. Liang and Yang made three double faults while the Indo-Czech pair made only one. This is Sania's 40th doubles title, of which 18 have come since the beginning of 2015. She had earlier won the same title with Zimbabwe player Cara Black twice. Earlier, Sania and Strycova won the Cincinnati Open last month by beating Swiss great Martina Hingis and Coco Vandeweghe 7-5, 6-4 in the summit clash. The pair has played one Grand Slam together, the US Open last month but suffered a defeat in the quarter-finals. Caroline Garcia and Kristina Mladenovic defeated them in straight sets in New York.

Meanwhile, India's Leander Paes and his German partner Andre Begemann made it to the finals of the St Petersburg Open by recording a straight-set victory over the Russian pair of Mikhail Elgin and Alexander Kudryavtsev in the men's doubles event. The Indo-German duo defeated the Russian pair 6-3 7-6 in a match that lasted around one and half hours.