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.

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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.

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.