Indian tennis ace Sania Mirza and her Croatian partner Mate Pavic advanced to the second round of the Wimbledon 2022 mixed doubles event on Friday.
Sixth-seeded Sania and Pavic defeated the unseeded pair of Georgia’s Natella Zalamidze and Spain’s David Vega Hernandez 6-4, 3-6, 6(10)-6(3) in one hour and 58 minutes.
Six-time Grand Slam winners Sania and Pavic, the current men’s doubles Wimbledon champions, faced stiff resistance from their opponents but were able to break them in the eighth game.
Since then, the Indian and his Croatian partner Pavic, who is also a Tokyo 2020 gold medalist, kept their cool to take the lead. In the second set, there was a tough fight in the initial round. However, Zalamidze and Hernandez broke Sania’s serve in the seventh game and gathered momentum to equalize.
Both the teams showed their best in the deciding set and had an entertaining spectacle. In the tenth game, the Indo-Croatian pair were on the verge of winning the match but their opponents saved four match points in the longest game of the competition.
Sania and Pavic stepped up their game in the Super tiebreaker and ran for a healthy lead and eventually sealed their place in the next round.
The 35-year-old Sania, who is playing her last season of professional tennis, is in her final Wimbledon tournament.
Earlier on Wednesday, she had crashed out in the first round of women’s doubles.