Australians Jarmila Gajdosova and Matthew Ebden are through to the Australian Open mixed doubles semi-finals after a tense quarter-final upset win.
Playing together for the first time at this tournament, the unseeded Australians saved one match point and needed three themselves to overcome fifth seeds Nadia Petrova, of Russia, and India’s Mahesh Bhupathi 6-3 3-6 13-11.
It was the second straight match in which they knocked out an Indian-Russian pairing, after eliminating second seeds Leander Paes and Elena Vesnina in the previous round.
All of the semi-finalists are unseeded.
The quarter-final was the first time the Australians had needed to win a third-set match tiebreaker, after straight-sets wins in the previous rounds.
It was a desperate tussle, the Australians at one stage down 7-4 in the deciding tiebreaker and needing to save a match point at 9-10 on Gajdosova’s serve.
They eventually clinched it on their third match point, but first on their own serve, courtesy of a big first serve from Ebden.
The temperamental Gajdosova said Ebden had kept her calm.
“Matt’s (nerves) were much better than mine. He kind of held it up, he was very positive, which helped me to relax,” she said.
The Australian pair, both first-round losers in the singles, will meet Kazakhstan’s Yaroslava Shvedova and Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin in one of Friday’s semi-finals.
The other will be between Czech pair Lucie Hradecka and Frantisek Cermak and another Czech player Kveta Peschke, who is partnering Poland’s Marcin Matkowski.