Bhupathi-Knowles go down in Wimbledon quarterfinals

LONDON - India’s Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles of Bahamas went down to South African Wesley Moodie and Dick Norman of Belgium in a marathon five-setter in the Wimbledon men’s doubles quarterfinals here Wednesday.

Bhupathi and Knowles, seeded fourth, lost 6-7(9), 6-4, 6-7 (7), 7-5, 4-6 in almost three and a half hours.

There was little to chose between the two teams as they served strong and kept coming back at each other.

Bhupathi and Knowles had only four break point opportunities in the match and they converted two to win the second and fourth sets.

Ninth-seeded Moodie and Norman had the tie-breakers going their way in both the first and third sets. But they made the right chances in the decider, breaking their opponents for the only time in the match. In all, they had six break point chances in the match three of which came in the decider.

After getting the important break in the decider, Moodie and Norman managed well when serving for the set at 5-4. Bhupathi and Knowles led 30-15 but Moodie and Norman took three points in a row to seal the issue.

Meanwhile, India’s challenge in the junior category ended with Sudarwa Sitaram and Liang-chi Huang of Chinese Taipei losing 1-6, 2-6 to American Mitchell Frank and Cheng peng Hsieh of Chinese Taipei.

Sudarwa had lost to Australian Bernard Tomic 2-6, 2-6 in the singles second round Tuesday.