Cincinnati : Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and her Chinese partner Peng Shuai crashed out of the ongoing 2017 Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati, after slumping to a straight sets defeat in the semi-finals of the women’s doubles event here on Saturday.
The fourth-seeded pair, who have been performing well in the tournament so far, went on to suffer a 4-6, 6-7 (6-8) defeat at the hands of Taiwanese-Romanian pair of Hsieh Su-wei and Monica Niculescu in a last-four clash that lasted more than one and a half hour.
It should be noted that Mirza and Peng had joined forces at the beginning of the US Open Series. Last week, the Indo-Chinese duo were compelled to give a walkover after reaching the quarter-finals at the Rogers Cup as the Chinese hurt her knee.
In the men’s doubles event, seventh-seeded India’s Rohan Bopanna and Croatia’s Ivan Dodig also bowed out of the US Open warm-up event after suffering defeat against Colombian-Italian team of Juan Sebastian Cabal and Fabio Fognini in the quarter-final clash.
After going down in the first set, Bopanna and Dodig bounced back to win the second before going down to suffer a 1-6, 7-5, 7-10 defeat against Cabal and Fognini and eventually bow out of the tournament.
With the duo’s exist, India’s campaign in the ongoing tournament also folded.( ANI)