Karman Kaur Thandi and Rutuja Bhosale lost 6-0, 6-3 to the top-seeded Canadian-Brazilian pair of Gabriela Dabrowski and Luisa Stefani in the women's doubles quarterfinal at the Chennai Open on Thursday.
With Thandi and Bhosale's loss, India's challenge at the WTA250 event being held at the SDAT Stadium in Nungambakkam also ended.
Dabrowski and Stefani, 2021 US Open semifinalists, started aggressively and clinched the opening set in 16 minutes on Court 2. The Indian duo, who got a last-minute entry in the draw as alternates, failed to match the quality of their opponents' net play and could only win seven out of 31 points.
Indians finally won their first game of the tie in the second set as Thandi held her serve to make it 1-1. As the home crowd cheered the two, they managed to break Dabrowski and took a 2-1 lead.
However, the top seeds targetted Bhosale and broke her twice in the next five games to turn the scoreline to 5-3 in their favour.
Playing her first tournament in more than a year after suffering a knee injury during the 2021 US semifinals with Dabrowski, Stefani served for a place in the semifinals successfully as Bhosale hit a cross-court forehand wide while facing second match point.
Earlier in the day, Britain's Katie Swan won 7-6 (5), 6-2 against Russian Anastasia Gasanova in a gruelling two hours 25 minutes second-round match on Court 1.
"It is probably one of the longest two-set matches I've ever played. It was so physical in the first set and I was trying to not waste any energy between the points, " said Swan in the post-match press conference.
Gasanova had knocked out top seed Alison Riske-Amritraj of the US in the opening round but against the British world number 174, she could not repeat the same performance.
The 23-year-old Russian had major problems holding her serve. In the third game of the opening set, she committed three double faults with the third one allowing Swan to get the early break.
Gasanova also received a time violation warning.
Throughout the match, she took an unusually long amount of time before her second serves as she would bounce the ball five-six times, then hold the ball close to the racquet before going back to bouncing the ball on the court again instead of tossing it up and hit.
Asked if the Russian's antics on court affected her in any way, Swan said, "Not really. I try to operate in every match by just focusing on myself and not getting distracted by whatever is going on with the opponent. It was a good test today and I did well."
After exchanging multiple breaks, the 23-year-old Swan had the chance to serve for the set at 6-5 when Gasanova asked for a medical timeout.
It broke the Brit's rhythm and when the match resumed, she hit the bottom of the net with her first and second serve.
Gasanova broke back and took the set to a tiebreaker where her serve betrayed her again as she committed two consecutive double faults from 3-4. Bristol-born Swan converted her third set point to take a 7-6 (5) lead after one hour 31 minutes.
In the second set, Swan again got the early break before experiencing pain in her right arm, which was heavily bandaged from the start.
However, after taking the medical timeout at 3-2, Swan reeled off the next three games to set up a quarterfinal clash with Japanese qualifier Nao Hibino.
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