Paes-Black in second round of mixed doubles

Paris:

Second seeds Leander Paes and Cara Black overcame a sluggish start to book a second round berth in the mixed doubles event of the French Open, scoring a 6-3 6-3 win over Virginie Razzano and Jeff Coetzee here.

After trading early breaks and squandering many breakpoints in the first set, the Indo-Zimbabwean pair raised their game and closed the match in style yesterday.

Paes-Black wasted as many as three breakpoints in the first set and dropped their serve once but did not give any chance to their unseeded opponents in the second.

They broke the French-South African rivals twice in the second set and saved one of the two breakpoints to progress to the next round.

They will next take on the winners of the match between Dominika Cibulkova/Filip Polasek and Sybille Bammer/Lukasz Kubot.

Sania Mirza and Mahesh Bhupathi are also in the fray and they will open their campaign against Nathalie Dechy of France and Israel's Andy Ram.