LONDON, England - Fifth seeds Timea Babos and Yaroslava Shvedova hurtled into the Wimbledon semifinals with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over defending champions Martina Hingis and Sania Mirza.
The confident duo were on the offensive right from the start with serving formations, aggressive net poaches, and pressure on returns. The tone was set from the off, a flurry of unreturned serves and sharp returns helping the underdogs build a 3-1 lead.
Shvedova, coming off a successful singles campaign, showed remarkable movement and intuition at the net. And this confidence proved infectious, her partner playing with a similarly assertive attitude. Their court presence rattled Hingis who was broken in her first two service games; the top seeds made mere 35% of first serves in court in the first set.
Momentum quickly ran away from the World No.1s as they were broken again early in the second set. Shvedova complemented her partner's service game at the net, a few quick put away volleys helping them consolidate the early breakthrough.
Key moments loomed for Hingis and Mirza; the first was an opportunity to break back and tie things up at 2-2, however, Babos and Shvedova refused to take their foot off the accelerator, instead stretching the lead to 5-2
The second opportunity for the top seeds to steal back momentum came with a break at 5-3. Hingis roused herself into life with a few aggressive volleys of her own. In the end, it was not to be, as Babos and Shvedova held a very dominant service game to quash any hopes of a comeback.
In the final, they will face No.10 seeds Raquel Atawo and Abigail Spears, who beat Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Kveta Peschke on Wednesday.
It was just not their day. Sania was having a particularly poor time getting returns in play.
I knew this was going to be a tough match for them to win going in. Had they grabbed the few break chances they had it might have been a different story.
It's too bad because there could have been a meeting between them and the Williams sisters.
Hopefully they'll get another chance, and return to winning form on hard courts. Next up we have the Olympics to look forward to in August.
With the possible Swiss dream team of Federer & Hingis :).
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