Paes wins his 11th Grand Slam
(AUSTRALIAN OPEN)

MONDAY 01, FEB 2010.

Leander and his Zimbabwean partner Cara Black clinched the Australian Open mixed doubles championship with a straight-set win.

Top seeds, Paes and Black beat 10th seeds Ekaterina Makarova of Russia and Jaroslav Levinsky of Czechoslovakia 7-5, 6-3.

The triumph gave Paes his 11th overall and fifth mixed doubles title. With this, he has equalled one-time doubles’ partner Mahesh Bhupathi’s tally.

The last couple of times they reached a Grand Slam final, Paes and Black ended up on the losing side and eager to make amends for that, they were dominant from the word go.

They broke their rivals as early as in the third game and save for a couple of breaks lost on Black’s serve, the Indo-Zimbabwean pair seemed hardly troubled by Makarova and Levinsky, who committed far too many unforced errors.

With momentum going in their favour, Paes and Black broke their rivals in the very first game of the second set.

Makarova and Levinsky had their moments but they were far too few in a match which left them amazed at Paes’s athleticism.

They could only watch wide-eyed as the veteran Indian reached out to chase unlikely winners at the net and inspire his partner in moments of doubt.

This is Paes and Black’s second title together, the first being the 2008 U.S. Open.

Paes and Black had made back-to-back Grand Slam finals — Wimbledon and the U.S. Open — last season but faltered at the finishing line in both the events.

Paes has been a former mixed doubles’ champion at Melbourne Park and that triumph came in 2003 when he was partnering American legend Martina Navratilova.