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Collin Matiza Sports Editor
CARA Black is through to the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles competition at the Australian Open tennis tournament. According to reports from Melbourne yesterday, the Zimbabwe women’s tennis legend, who turns 35 on February 17, and her Colombian partner Juan Sebastian Cabal beat American Lisa Raymond and Swede Robert Lindstedt to pull through to the last eight of the mixed doubles.

But Black and Cabal, who are seeded fifth at the first Grand Slam of the year, were made to sweat for victory by their unseeded opponents who they beat 6-4, 5-7 (14-12) in a protracted second round match which lasted more than one-and-a-half hours.

Black and Cabal are playing together for the first time as a mixed doubles couple and they will face either the third-seeded pair of France’s Kristina Mladenovic and veteran Canadian men’s tennis player Daniel Nestor or the unseeded duo of Michaela Krajicek of the Netherlands and Romania’s Florin Mergea in the fight for a place in the semi-finals of this year’s Australian Open mixed doubles.

Black is already a winner of the mixed doubles title at the Australian Open where she teamed-up with the legendary Indian men’s tennis player Leander Paes and swept their way to victory in 2010 where they defeated Ekaterina Makarova and Jaroslav Levinský in the final 7–5, 6–3. At this year’s Australian Open, Black entered both the women’s doubles and mixed doubles competitions but she fell at the first hurdle in the former event in which she was being partnered by China’s Saisai Zheng in day three of the tournament on Wednesday last week.

Black and Zheng were unseeded and playing together for the first time on the road in Melbourne but they came short in their first round tie against Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and Alicja Rosolska who beat them in straight sets 6-1, 6-4.