By Jilawatan

Top seed Sania Mirza will chase her second consecutive ITF Challenger title when she takes on second seed Stephanie Dubois in the final of the Oldum Brown VanOpen on Sunday.

Mirza battled past her second teenage Canadian opponent in a row, and was once again stretched to three sets before prevailing 6-7 (6), 6-3, 6-2 over Sharon Fichman in the last match of the day at Vancouver. Her opponent in the final is another Canadian, 22-year old Stephanie Dubois, ranked 129 in the world.

Sania started her semi-final against Fichman like a house on fire, racing to a 4-1 lead in the opening set before the Canadian rattled off three games in a row to level the set at 4-4. Four tight games were to follow, as both players had chances to close out the set, before it finally headed into a tie-breaker.

Mirza went ahead 6-4 in the breaker, but failed to take her set points as Fichman won four straight points to steal the set 7-6 (8-6).

The Indian tennis ace was in trouble early in the second set, down 2-0, but raised the level of her play to rattle off 6 of the next 7 games to level the match at a set apiece.

The third set was close early on, before Mirza broke decisively for a 3-2 lead. This time however there was no letting up from the former Hyderabad Open champion as she won the final three games of the match with ease to put her name in the hat for Sunday’s title match.

Earlier in the day, Dubois was stretched for the first time in the tournament in her semi-final against American Mashona Washington. Despite a slight hiccup in a close second set, Dubois booked a place in the final 6-2, 4-6, 6-3. Dubois was a finalist in this event two years ago falling to Britain’s Anne Keothavong in the championship match.

A pair of former world top-20 players will meet in the men’s final. Third-seed Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus will square-off against Xavier Malisse of Belgium on Sunday afternoon.

Baghdatis battled back to defeat Britain’s Alex Bogdanovic 3-6, 6-4, 6-3 in one Saturday semi-final while Malisse outlasted American Tim Smyczek 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 in the other. Malisse is looking for his second victory in as many weeks after winning a $50,000 Challenger event in Granby, Quebec last weekend.