Cara out of Wimbledon women’s doubles

up in smoke when she exited in the third round at the All England Club in London late on Tuesday night.
Black, a women’s doubles title winner at Wimbledon in 2004, 2005 and 2007, and her Israeli partner Shahar Peer came up against the second-seeded pair of Kveta Peschke of the Czech Republic and Slovenia’s Katarina Srebotnik in the third round of the third Grand Slam of the year.
And Black and Peer, who were seeded 14th, came short against Peschke and Srebotnik who beat them 6-2, 5-7, 6-3 to march into the quarter-finals, according to reports from London.
Tuesday’s rain-interrupted third round match at one stage saw Black and Peer trailing 1-5 in the first set before they woke up from their deep slumber in the second which they won 7-5 to stretch the match to three sets.
But Peschke and Srebotnik refused to be intimidated as they came out firing once again in the third and final set in which they outplayed their opponents and won it 6-3 to pull through to the last eight.
Although Black fell by the wayside in the women’s doubles on Tuesday night, she still has something to fight for at the All England Club where she is still in the hunt for the mixed doubles title.
Black and her Indian partner Leander Paes, the mixed doubles defending champions at Wimbledon, are already through to the third round of this year’s tournament.
Seeded 14th at Wimbledon this year, Black and Paes pulled through to the third round of the mixed doubles after beating the Dutch-Polish combination of Rogier Wassen and Alicja Rosolska 6-1, 6-4 in the second round late on Monday night.
In the third round, Black and Paes will face the winners of the other second round tie featuring third seeds Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia and Srebotnik, and the unseeded British pair of Ross Hutchins and Heather Watson.
At this year’s tournament in London, Black is searching for her third Wimbledon mixed doubles title after winning it in 2004 with her now-retired brother Wayne and last year with Paes.
All in all, Cara has won five Grand Slam mixed doubles titles, two of them partnering her brother Wayne: the 2002 French Open and the 2004 Wimbledon Championships (they reached the final of the 2004 French Open and the semi-finals of the 2003 French Open and 2003 US Open); and most recently the 2008 US Open and the 2010 Australian Open with Paes.
Entering the 2011 season, Cara partnered Russian Anastasia Rodionova in the women’s doubles where they reached the semi-final in Brisbane, Australia, but lost in the first round of the Sydney International tournament.
During the 2011 Australian Open, Cara and Rodionova were seeded fifth and reached the quarter-finals where they lost to Cara’s former partner Liezel Huber and Nadia Petrova.
In mixed doubles, Cara partnered Paes and they were seeded fourth.
They were eliminated in the second round by Chan Yung-jan and Paul Hanley in a tight straight sets loss, 6-7 (11), 6-7 (5).
Despite being eliminated from both doubles and mixed doubles, Cara was a sideline commentator for Seven including the grand final for women’s doubles and was present for former doubles partner Rennae Stubbs’s speech.
Cara then missed all tournaments following the Australian Open, including the 2011 French Open.
But then, partnering Russia’s Arina Rodionova, she played at the 2011 AEGON Trophy, an ITF US$100 000 tournament held in Nottingham in the second week of Roland Garros as the second seed.
The pair lost in the first round.
After playing at Nottingham, Cara then moved to London where she teamed-up with Israel’s Peer for the Wimbledon women’s doubles, and then with Paes for the mixed doubles.
But it was on the eve of Cara and Paes’ women’s first round tie last Wednesday when Arina Rodionova told an overseas-based tennis website, TennisForum.com, that the Zimbabwean player was going to hang up her rackets after playing at this year’s Wimbledon tournament in London. Cara is yet to comment publicly about her reported plans to retire from tennis, 13 years after turning professional.