The defending champions and top seeded pair of Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis crashed out in the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles draw and Leander Paes and Hingis bowed out in the third round of the mixed doubles draw at Wimbledon on Thursday.
The fifth seeded pair of Timea Babos of Hungary and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan beat the Indo-Swiss pair 6-2, 6-4 in 68 minutes and Paes and Hingis lost to Henri Kontinen and Heather Watson 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Mirza’s disastrous campaign at Wimbledon ended as she had already exited from the mixed doubles draw on Tuesday, where she and her Croatian mixed doubles partner Ivan Dodig lost their second round encounter in straight sets.
In the first set, the Mirza-Hingis pair were broken in the third game and then in the seventh game as the fifth seeds won the first set 6-2.
If the first set was an easy affair for Babos and Shvedova, the second set virtually became a cakewalk as they opened up with a 5-1 lead with a double break.
However, Mirza and Hingis tried to claw their way back by winning one break back, making it 4-5 before the winners held their serve in the 10th game to enter the semi-finals.
Mirza and Hingis were guilty of not winning too many points on first serve and also made a lot of unforced errors to make life difficult for themselves.
Later in the day, Hingis’ Wimbledon campaign came to an end after the Swiss and her partner Leander Paes lost to Kontinen and Watson in the third round of the mixed doubles draw.
The defending champions took the first set after clinching both of the break points that they earned. In the second set, Kontinen and Watson broke in the sixth game and took a 4-2 lead. Thereafter, they held their serve and won the set 6-3.
Kontinen and Watson broke their opponent’s serve in the fifth game of the third set and took a 3-2 lead. Then the Indo-Swiss pair failed to even win a game and went down 6-2 in the final set.
(With inputs from PTI)