Cara Black and Liezel Huber's preparations for their defence of the Australian Open doubles title suffered another blow when they were knocked out in the quarter-finals of the Medibank International women's tennis tournament in Sydney, Australia on Tuesday.
Zimbabwe's women's tennis doubles specialist Black and her American partner Huber, who were the top seeds at the 600,000 U.S. dollars Tier II tournament, were on Tuesday upstaged by the unseeded pair of Alicia Molik of Australia and China's Tiantian Sun, who rallied to beat them 3-6, 6-3, 10-7, in a three-set thriller.
According to The Herald, the two teams kept the spectators spellbound for nearly two hours as they slugged it out in the warm temperatures of Sydney yesterday.
Black and Huber threatened to run away with the tie when they took the first set 6-3 but Molik and Sun refused to be intimidated as they came back fighting in the second, taking it 6-3 to stretch the match into the third and final set.
The two teams then stood toe-to-toe in the deciding final set which finally fell to the tenacious pair of Molik and Sun.
Black and Huber are now looking at picking themselves up before heading to Melbourne for the defence of their Australian Open title next week. Source: Xinhua
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