A crown for SerAndy will have to wait. Top seeds Bruno Soares/Nicole Melichar beat Andy Murray/Serena Williams, the most well-known mixed doubles team in recent history, 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 on Wednesday at Wimbledon.
Soares/Melichar converted both break points in the third set while Murray/Williams never had such an opportunity in the decider. The Brazilian/American combination will meet Matwe Middelkoop/Zhaoxuan Yang for a place in the semi-finals. The Dutch/Chinese team beat Marcus Daniell/Jennifer Brady 6-2, 6-7(5), 6-4.
“They played well. I think they played quite a bit together. They were solid. I think we were probably a little bit more up and down than them throughout. They were more consistent,” Murray said.
“Bruno played a bad game on his serve at 5-4 in the second set. Apart from that, we weren’t getting lots of free points. We were having to work for every game. They deserved to win.”
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Murray/Williams added some serious star power to the mixed doubles draw, typically not a place for singles legends. But the two champions, who have 26 Grand Slam singles titles between them (Williams, 23; Murray, three) thrilled organisers and crowds and seemed to enjoy the extra tennis themselves.
“We had so much fun. We aren’t ready for it to be over. But we both are obviously focused on our health… taking it literally one day at a time, seeing what happens from there,” Williams said.
Murray returned to competitive tennis last month by winning the Fever-Tree Championships doubles title with Spain’s Feliciano Lopez. The Scot is hoping to return to the singles court in the near future.
“I think I achieved a lot. Got on the court. I think, considering the lack of matches, I did OK. The most positive thing is that my body felt good. My hip anyway was feeling good, so that was positive,” he said.
“It’s a lot of physical work now trying to get stronger really, get a good balance with all the muscles around my hip. Yeah, I think I’m doing some physical testing next week. I did some pre-Queen’s. It will be interesting to see what’s happened these past four weeks where I’ve been obviously playing tennis but doing not much training, to see how things have progressed or not.
“Then I’ll do sort of four to six weeks of training. Then I’ll have some testing done after that again. Hopefully I will have progressed again. But I still got, like I said, quite a long way to go.”
Fifth seeds Wesley Koolhof/Kveta Peschke also booked a place in the quarter-finals by knocking out Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi/Nadiia Kichenok 7-6(5), 6-4.
Source: ATP World Tour
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