Bhupathi, Likhovtseva in quarters of mixed doubles

Indian tennis ace Mahesh Bhupathi and Elena Likhovtseva of Russia on Wednesday advanced to the fourth round in the mixed doubles at the Wimbledon tennis championships.

The third seeds won their third round match against the Japanese pair of Thomas Shimada and Rika Fujiwara 6-2, 7-5.

Bhupathi and Likhovtseva broke early in the first set and again at 4-2 with some good reflex volleying. Likhovtseva held serve to take the first set.

The second set was hotly contested with several service breaks. At 2-1, both the pairs traded four successive breaks of serve before Shimada held his own serve. But Fujiwara lost her service in the ninth game after a long deuce. As in the first set, Likhovtseva then held serve, with Bhupathi dominating the net, to seal a place in the quarter-finals.

Earlier, Bhupathi and Max Mirnyi of Belarus had lost in the quarter-finals of the doubles 2-6, 3-6, 4-6 to fifth seeds Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden and Todd Woodbridge of Australia.

Bhupathi's former partner Leander Paes and Lisa Raymond of the United States will be resuming their game on Thursday to serve for the match as rain disrupted play.

The duo were leading 4-6, 7-5, 5-3 in their second round match against Paul Haarhuis and Miriam Oremans of the Netherlands.

In the first set, Raymond dropped serve in the third game as the Dutch won the set at 6-4.

The Indo-American pair broke Oremans's serve twice in the second set to stage a comeback.

In the third set, Paes-Raymond again forced a break in the eighth game on Oremans's serve to go up 5-3. Paes served his ninth ace of the match at deuce to earn their first match-point. But the Dutch didn't give away and saved two match-points.

At the fourth deuce, rain again interrupted the match.