Early Exit From Madrid for Liezel & Anabel
Published May 12, 2010 12:00
MADRID, Spain - Three of the five seeded teams in action Wednesday at the Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open went down, including No.1-ranked doubles player Liezel Huber - champion here last year with Cara Black - and partner Anabel Medina Garrigues.
The No.4 seeds, playing their first career match together, were conquered by unseeded Chuang Chia-Jung and Vania King, 62 26 119. With a match point against them in the match tie-break at 9-8 down, Chuang and King won the final three points to score the upset. They have paired up only once before, in 2007 at Tokyo [Japan Open], where they were runners-up, yet now find themselves in the quarterfinals of a Premier-level event against another unseeded team, Shahar Peer and Francesca Schiavone, who had a surprisingly easy time with No.6 seeds Lisa Raymond and Rennae Stubbs, 60 62.
On the bottom half of the draw, second-seeded Nuria Llagostera Vives and María José Martínez Sánchez, trying to shake off their disappointing loss in last week's Rome final to Gisela Dulko and Flavia Pennetta, rolled to a 60 62 victory over Liga Dekmeijere and Alisa Kleybanova. Next up for them are Virginia Ruano Pascual and Meghann Shaughnessy, who got past seventh-seeded Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Yan Zi in a match tie-break.
Read more on the Spaniards' partnership on our Doubles Profiles page!
As for Dulko and Pennetta, the hottest team on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour won their 16th straight match, 64 75, over Anastasia Rodionova and Patty Schnyder in the only quarterfinal to be played thus far. The three remaining quarterfinals will be played Thursday, including top-seeded Serena and Venus Williams against Maria Kirilenko and Agnieszka Radwanska.
