Zimbabwe’s most decorated female tennis player, Cara Black, was knocked out of the women’s doubles competition following a titanic encounter on Tuesday.
Black, playing alongside Israeli Shahar Peer and up against the second seeds, Czech Republic’s Kveta Peschke and Slovenian Katarina Srebotnik, got off to a disastrous start in the first set, being broken twice and finding themselves 5-0 down within 20 minutes.
Peer served them to their first game, before they broke serve to reduce the arrears to 5-2. However, broken again, they lost the first set 6-2.
The second set saw an early break of serve each, leaving Peer to serve to tie the set up at 3-3. However, failing to hold serve, the Czech-Slovenian duo opened up a 4-2 lead, only to be broken back again straight after, before the set was levelled at 4-4.
Both then held serve to make it 5-5 before Peer and Black gave themselves a great chance of levelling the match as they broke again to go 6-5 up, which they duly took as Black served out to take the second set 7-5 — and into a deciding third.
However, once again they were broken in their first service game, and 2-0 down faced an uphill struggle. However, yet again they bounced back, breaking immediately, then held serve, and spurned a break point to go 3-2 ahead.
That though was as close as it got for them, as the more experienced duo held their nerve and composure, before going on to seal the set 6-3.
Peer is still involved in the mixed doubles, where she is teaming up with fellow Israeli Jonathan Erlich, while Andy Ram is still also involved in the mixed.
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Meanwhile Black and her Indian partner Leander Paes are still in the running in the mixed doubles.
The 14th seeded Indo-Zimbabwean pair defeated their unseeded opponent 6-1, 6-4 and were on Wednesday set to face the winner of the match between Nendad Zimonjic-Katarina Benesova and Ross Hutchins-Heather Watson.