Sania Mirza will be hoping to become the youngest Indian ever to make it to the main draw of a Grand Slam event when she leads the Indian challenge at the Asian Tennis Championships starting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Monday.
The USD100,000 flagship event of the Asian Tennis Federation, in its 32nd edition, offers a unique opportunity to the players from the region, whereby the men's and women's singles winners get a wild card for the Australian Open the following year.
The tournament, whose past men's winners also include Vijay Amritraj and Paradorn Srichaphan, has a prize money of USD 7,200 to the singles winners and USD 3,100 to the doubles champions.
Sania, who turns 18 in November, is on a high after pocketing three consecutive USD 10,000 titles in Italy and England besides reaching her maiden in New Delhi last month.
The 17-year old, with a WTA ranking of 326, leads the Indian pack that also consists Rushmi Chakravarthy (344), Ankita Bhambri (477) and Sai Jayalakshmy (526) besides Sunil Kumar Sipaeya (376) and Vishal Uppal (558) in the men's section.
The Hyderabadi girl, who trains under Bob Brett, formerly a coach of Boris Becker, has had a remarkable year on the senior circuit, winning four titles to increase her tally to 10.
Sania is restricted in her tournament play till she turns major and will be looking to begin the 2005 season with a bang at the Australian Open.
But she will be up against some of the best in the circuit. The women's field is headed by Mi-Ra Jeon of Korea. A former finalist at the junior Wimbledon, Mi-Ra is ranked 164 on the WTA computer, and more importantly, tamed the Indian lass 6-4, 6-2 in the Fed Cup zonal qualifiers in New Delhi in April this year.
The men's pack is headed by 19-year old Yeu-Tzuoo Wang (168) of Chinese Taipei but Pakistan's Aisam-ul Haq Qureshi (205) will make it a close contest. Hosts Uzbekistan would be pinning their hopes on long time national champ Vadim Kutsenko, the hero of many Davis Cup battles.
The Indians have been done in by the withdrawal of Davis Cuppers Harsh Mankad and Rohan Bopanna besides the injury rule-out of Vinod Sridhar.