Player Interviews
Cara Black has been one of this decade's topmost exponents of the doubles game. She has w
on 63 titles over her career and 9 slams in women's & mixed doubles. Amazingly she has completed the career mixed doubles Slam and is one French Open away from achieving the same in the women's doubles. Indian tennis fans would recognise the name since she has been a regular partner with Leander Paes over the last few years. Cara hails from Harare, Zimbabwe and the Black family's competence in doubles is well known as her brothers - Wayne & Byron were regulars on the men's doubles circuit through the 90's and up to mid 2000's.
She is currently defending her title in Birmingham and I caught up with her after her semi-final win, to speak to her about the match, her career, the shape the game's taken over the year's she's been part of it and of course about what it like to play with Leander Paes. Cara Black graciously agreed to the interview and responded wonderfully to everything we threw at her.
Leander Paes has been the flag bearer of Indian tennis for close to two decades now and is currently at Roland Garros looking to defend his French Open Men's Doubles crown, that he won with Lukas Dlouhy of the Czech Republic. The pair played their first round match yesterday (
Asked how she sees the doubles progressing and if she and Virginia were forming a good rapport, Sania replied having won two matches in the Slam, things were going well and as a pair they were getting better with every match. Since this was just their third tournament together, it took a little getting used to playing with a new partner, especially considering that she usually plays on the forehand side of the court, but with Virginia she had to play the ad court which took her sometime to get adjusted to.
1989 French Open Champion Michael Chang spent sometime answering journalists queries on Wednesday ahead of his January trip to Hong Kong to play in an exhibition event featuring fellow greats like Stefan Edberg coupled with modern superstars of the pedigree of Maria Sharapova and Venus Williams.  Chang fended queries from playing mixed doubles with the ladies to Andre Agassi's comments about their 1996 Australian Open semi-final in this interesting tete-a-tete.
