Paes reaches doubles semis, Sanam bows out in Wimbledon

London, July 6 (UNI) Leander Paes and his Czech partner Martin Damm reached the semi-final in the doubles competition while young hopeful Sanam Singh bowed out of the boy's singles event on Day nine at the Wibledon here.

Rupesh Roy, however, made up Sanam's loss with a second round victory in boy's doubles to move into the quarter-finals while Sanaa Bhambri made her exit in the girl's doubles.

Seventh seed Paes-Damn pair recovered from 2-1 down and walked away with a 7-6 (10/8), 6-7 (5/7), 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (9/7), 6-2 win in a thrilling four hour and 13 minutes marathon encounter over fourth seeded combination of Australian Paul Hanley and Kevin Ullyet of Zimbabwe.

The Indo-Czech pair will now play the winner of the match between second seeded Jonas Bjorkman (Sweden)-Max Mirnyi (Belarus) pair and six seeded duo of Fabrice Santoro (France)-Nenad Zimonjic (Serbia) for a place in the final.

In the boys' singles, eight seeded Sanam K Singh went down 2-6, 3-6 to 12th seed Artur Chernov of Russia in the third round.

Rupesh Roy remained the only Indian hope among the juniors as he and his partner Hsin Han Lee of Chinese Taipei defeated Edgar Rodriguez (Colombia)/Jose-Roberto Velasco (Bolivia) pair 6-7 (2/7), 6-3, 6-4 to book a place in the quarter-finals.

Meanwhile, Sanaa Bhambri was not so lucky as Rupesh as she and her partner Wing Yau Venise Chan of Hong Kong lost to top seeded pair of Kristina Antoniychuk of Ukraine and Alexandra Dulgheru of Romania 3-6, 4-6 in the second round.

In men's 45 and over doubles, brothers' duo of Anand Amritraj and Vijay Amritraj registered a comfortable 6-3, 6-4 win over Brian Gottfried of United States and Raul Ramirez of Mexico.

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