London: Leander Paes and Radek Stepanek survived a first round scare but Sania Mirza and Cara Black were dumped from the women’s doubles event at Wimbledon late on Saturday.
The fifth-seeded Indo-Czech pair of 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.
Meanwhile, fourth seeds Sania and her Zimbabwean partner Cara suffered a shock 2-6, 7-6 (7), 6-4 defeat at the hands of the unseeded Russian-Czech pair of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Lucie Safarova.
This is Sania’s worst performance at this season’s Grand Slams as he had managed to reach quarterfinals at both Australian Open and French Open.
Her challenge is, however, 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. (PTI)
