It is just one week to go for the Rio Olympics and Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza’s recent results on the WTA Tour have been anything but confidence-boosting. The pair of Mirza and Martina Hingis, who have been struggling for the past few weeks, could not show any improvement in their form as the top seeds went down meekly in the quarter-finals of the Rogers Cup in Montreal on Friday.
A 4-6, 3-6 loss to the unseeded American duo of Christina McHale and Asia Muhammad certainly raises concerns over their medal chances for their respective countries at Rio.
What should hurt the Indo-Swiss duo was their inability to convert the many opportunities they got. As many as 9 break points came their way but they could not make use of any of them. On the other hand, they had their own serves broken thrice to slump to the loss in 1 hour 10 minutes.
Hingis and Mirza, who began the year with the Australian Open title, have won only one of their last nine tournaments together prior to this week’s Rogers Cup.
Kerber, Halep progress in singles
In singles, second seed and Wimbledon runner-up Angelique Kerber continued her good run of form as she booked her place in the semi-finals with a solid display. The German needed just 1 hour to dismiss the rising 19-year-old Russian Daria Kasatkina, 6-2, 6-2.
The Australian Open winner broke Kasatkina’s serve seven times in this contest.
She will next meet the third seed and last year’s runner-up Simona Halep, who had to work hard for a 3-6, 6-1, 6-1 comeback victory over two-time Grand Slam champion Svetlana Kuznetsova. After struggling to find her range in the opening set, the Romanian bounced back in an impressive fashion and did not even face a single break point in the last two sets.
The match finished in 1 hour 36 minutes.
