Sania Mirza and Shahar Peer eased into the women’s doubles third round with a straight-set win over Agnes Szavay of Hungary and Vladimira Uhlirova of Czech Republic at the Wimbledon Grand Slam on Tuesday.
The Indo-Israeli pair, who were a set up when play was suspended by rain on Monday, came through 6-4, 6-3. The duo next faces top seeds Lisa Raymond of the US and Samantha Stosur of Australia.
Players’ backlash
Wimbledon organisers were facing a backlash from players over their refusal to play matches on the tournament’s middle Sunday to help keep the match schedule on track following rain delays.
Although there was only 75 minutes of action on Saturday, compounding the impact of delays earlier in the first week, All England Club officials ruled out playing on the Sunday for the first time since 2004, which was only the third time it has happened in the tournament’s history.
That left players such as second seed Rafael Nadal facing the prospect of playing on three consecutive days to get through third round, fourth round and quarterfinal matches.
Wimbledon is the only Grand Slam tournament to have a rest day on the middle Sunday and former finalist David Nalbandian claimed most of the players believed it should come into line with the others.
“It’s always like this here, but I don’t agree, nobody agrees,” the Argentinian said.
“The players in the bottom half of the draw have to play today, tomorrow and day after tomorrow. So why? Because nobody who takes the responsibilty to play all three days in a row is going to play. So that is why they don’t care about us.
“It is very, very tough for the players.”
Nalbandian’s comments were echoed by his third round conqueror Marcos Baghdatis. “It would have been so great to have played yesterday,” the Cypriot said. “Now we have to play Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in the bottom half of the draw and it’s pretty tough but that’s the way it is. We have to accept it.”
A spokesman for the All England Club suggested the players’ complaints were a case of “20/20 hindsight.”
“When the decision was made, we were far enough ahead in the schedule and the forecast for Sunday was actually terrible. The issue of whether we should always play on the middle Sunday is a different one. It has been the tradition here that we don’t and for the moment we take the view that it is useful for everyone — players, officials and residents — to have a rest day, so we don’t see any need for change.”