Leander Paes and Radek Stepanek survived a first round scare but Sania Mirza and Cara Black were dumped from the women’s doubles event of the Wimbledon Championships.
Fifth seeded Indo-Czech pair Paes and Stepanek had to battle for three hours to douse the challenge of Santiago Gonzalez and Scott Lipsky 3-6 6-1 3-6 6-3 11-9 in the rain-hit marathon opening round of the grass court Grand Slam on Saturday.
Paes, who missed the French Open due to turbulence in personal life, and Stepanek could convert only four of the 17 break chances in the contest even as they dropped serve twice.
Meanwhile, fourth seeds Sania and her Zimbabwean partner Cara suffered a shock 6-2 6-7(7) 4-6 defeat at the hands of unseeded Russian-Czech pair Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Lucie Safarova.
Sania and Cara won four more points to 111 of their rivals and converted more break chances (6) than Anastasia and Lucie (5) but ended up on the wrong side of the result.
This is Sania’s worst performance at this season’s Grand Slams as she had managed to reach quarterfinals at both Australian Open and French Open.
Her challenge is though still alive in the mixed doubles with Romanian partner Horia Tecau. They are seeded sixth and open their campaign against Mate Pavic of Croatia and Bojana Jovanovski of Serbia.
