Sports India

Seventh seeds Leander Paes and Martin Damm appeared off colour as they went down to Frenchman Fabrice Santoro and Serb Nenad Zimonjic in the men’s doubles semifinal of Wimbledon Grand Slam Tennis championship.

It took the sixth seeds just over 90 minutes to sweep the match 6-2, 6-1, 7-5, making short work of the Indo-Czech duo yesterday.

Paes and Damm were defending their half of the court well, registering some good winners, but the Indian struggled to get his serve into any sort of groove in the first set.

In contrast, Santoro and Zimonjic were in sterling form, having dropped just a single set in the tournament and even beating second seeds Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi in straight sets in the quarters.

Zimonjic served a couple of aces in the opening game which set the tone for the rest of the match.

They also ran away with second set, with Damm and Paes unable to pose much resistance.

In the third set, Paes-Damm tried but in vain to find some of the will that enabled them to put out 4th seeds Paul Hanley and Kevin Ullyett in a four-hour quarter-final match.

They took the lead, but Damm was unable to serve out the set. Santoro and Zimonjic drew level 5-5. Another break of Paes service and Zimonjic was able to close proceedings in the next game.

In juniors’ section, Rupesh Roy and Hsin Han Lee of Chinese Taipei pulled off a brave 7-6 (7/5) 6-7 (7/4) 6-4 win in the boy’s doubles quarterfinal.

They beat Luka Belic and Antonio Veic of Croatia to enter the semifinals where they will meet second seeds Martin Klizan and Andrei Martin of Slovakia.