Paes-Stosur pair crashes out in mixed doubles quarters

London, July 7 (UNI) Fourth seeds Leander Paes and his Australian team mate Samantha Stosur crashed out of the mixed doubles event after suffering a straight set defeat against the formidable but unseeded American pair of Bob Bryan and Venus Williams in the quarterfinals here.

In court number two, the Indo-Australian player tried every trick in the book but found the going tough against their American opponents who took just over an hour to carve out a 7-6(7/3), 6-3 victory.

Paes and Stosur knew it was not going to be easy against the Americans but they started on a defiant note, making their opponents toil for every point. With both the pairs not ready to concede an inch, the set went into tie-breaker and here Paes and Stosur fumbled and forfeited the set after fighting for 35 minutes.

Paes and Stosur looked demoralised after losing the first set and that affected their show in the second set as well. The high-profile American pair grabbed the opportunity and played compact tennis to win the set and seal the game.

In semifinals, the Bryan-Williams duo will take on second seeds Max Mirnyi of Belarus and his Chinese team mate Jie Zheng.

In the other semifinal, ninth seeded Israeli-Russian duo of Andy Ram and Vera Zvonareva will meet either third seeded Zimbabwean pair of Wayne Black and Cara Black or seventh seeded Serbian Nenad Zimonjic and his Slovak partner Katarina Srebotnik.

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