London: Leander Paes and Daniel Nestor had to dig deep into their reserves to prevail over Yen-Hsun Lu and Teymuraz Gabashvili in a marathon men's doubles second round at the Wimbledon Championships, here on Saturday.
The 11th seeded Indo-Canadian pair were pushed by the Taipei-Russian combination before managing a 5-7, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (4), 7-5 victory that took them to the pre-quarterfinals.
In the three-hour 15 minutes match, the two pairs broke each other only twice as high quality tennis was on display. Paes and Nestor won 160 points, only 11 more than their worthy rivals.
Paes and Nestor saved two break chances in the second set and that proved decisive in the outcome of the match as they managed to break rivals one time in three chances.
For a place in the quarterfinals, they will now fight it out with the eighth seeded team of Alexander Peya from Austria and Bruno Soares from Brazil.
In a late night match on Friday, top seeded pair of Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis made short work of Japan's Kimiko Dare-Krumm and Italy's Francesca Schiavone 6-0, 6-1 in just 44 minutes to race to the women's doubles pre-quarters.
In the mixed doubles, India's Rohan Bopanna and his Spanish partner Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez defeated American Eric Butorac and his Hungarian partner Katalin Marosi 7-6 (9), 5-7, 7-5 to advance to the second round.
