Top seeds in the women's doubles -- Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis -- marched into the quarterfinals of Wimbledon 2016, and the Swiss later paired with Leander Paes in the mixed doubles to also emerge triumphant on Monday. But, there was disappointment for Rohan Boppana and his Romanian partner Florin Mergea, who crashed out in third round of the men's competition.
There was an element of class in the way the Indo-Swiss pair performed against Christina McHale and Jelena Ostapenko, defeating the American-Latvia pair in straight sets. Sania and Hingis did not look in any sort of problem in either sets, winning it 6-1, 6-0, and the pair are yet to drop a single set in this Grand Slam.
The top seeds could face a much tougher opponent in next round, in the form of fifth seeds Timea Babos and Yaroslava Shvedova, who are yet to play their third round match.
The sixteenth seeds in the mixed doubles arena, Paes and Hingis, also did not have much trouble in seeing off Artem Sitak and Laura Siegemund 6-4, 6-4 in the second round. The match lasted for 76 minutes, and the pair is now expected to meet the second seeds Bruno Soares and Elena Vesnina in the third round.
However, it was not all rosy for India, as Bopanna and Mergea played a marathon five-setter against Henri Kontinen and John Peers, but lost the entertaining encounter. The Indo-Romanian pair looked good as they won the first set with ease, but their opponents came back hard, and won the next two. So, Bopanna and Mergea had to win the fourth set just to stay alive in the match, and they sweated it out, before winning it via an amazing tiebreak.
But the pair, after a good fight in the last set, lost the match, with the final score reading 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-7(6-8), 8-6 in favour of the No.10 seeds.
Bopanna is still not out of Wimbledon entirely, as he is in the third round of the mixed doubles competition, with Russian partner Anastasia Rodionova.
