IT wasn't exactly what Maia Lumsden had in mind for her junior Wimbledon debut.
The highly-rated 15-year-old Glaswegian wild card, a winner of the prestigious Orange Bowl event, showed plenty of that promise as she took the first set against an opponent three years her elder in the Czech Petra Uberalova.
She was even making a decent fist of it in the second set at 4-3 down before her day took a turn for the worse. Her vision began to become impaired, her legs started to shake and, although she carried on for a few games more, she could not complete the match, and retired injured at 4-6, 6-3, 4-1 down.
"I was really enjoying it, playing well and then suddenly it happened," said Lumsden, whose fellow Glaswegian Anna Brogan had been eliminated from the competition on Saturday night. "My left eye went completely blurry and my legs started getting a bit shaky. It might have been a migraine, because my head was really sore, or it could have been low sugar.
"It was really weird but a similar thing happened last week when I wasn't on the court, I lay down for 10 minutes and it got better. Maybe I should have eaten more before the match, but I am not sure really. Last week when it happened, I got a little bit scared, but this week I just thought 'oh no' because I knew I wouldn't be able to continue. But hopefully if I can get my ranking up I can have a lot more junior slams," added the teenager who is now coached by Mark Walker.
There was better news for Arbroath's Jonny O'Mara, who is one of just a handful of Brits who remain in the boys' singles after he completed an 7-6 (3), 5-7, 9-7 win against Maxime Janvier, his French opponent who finished the match serving under-hand because of injury. He plays the No.11 seed, Pedro Cachin of Argentina, on Court 9 today.
It was a day of disappointment in the doubles. Colin Fleming and Jonny Marray, the Yorkshireman who won the title last year with Frederik Nielsen, were beaten 7-6 (5), 7-5, 6-3 by the No.6 seeds Robert Lindstedt and Daniel Nestor, although the Scot was philosophical about it. "We don't feel we played badly; they just served really well," Fleming said. "But we feel that, as a pairing, we have got some good momentum going now and if we keep building on what we did on grass we can have a good summer now in the States."
The result provided a degree of revenge for the Swede Lindstedt, who, with his then partner Horia Tecau, suffered a third successive Wimbledon final defeat last year at the hands of Marray and Nielsen, the unlikely champions who had only entered the draw courtesy of a wildcard but did not defend their title together because the Dane had indicated he wanted to give his singles career priority. He had gone out of the event in the second round in partnership with the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov.
The Scot's day didn't get much better in the mixed doubles, as he and Laura Robson went down 6-7 (2), 6-2, 6-4 to the Slovaks Filip Polasek and Janette Husarova. In the same competition, Jamie Murray and Hsieh Su-Wei, of Chinese Taipei, also lost out 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-4 to Jean-Julien Roger of the Netherlands and Vera Dushevina of Russia.
It was to prove a grim day for British competitors in all the doubles events. Also in the mixed, Marray and Heather Watson were beaten 2-6 6-3 6-3 in the second round by Spain's David Marrero and Kimiko Date Krumm, the 42-year-old Japanese player who lost to Serena Williams in the third round of the singles.
Kyle Edmund, who won his opening boys' singles match earlier in the day, was also vanquished in the mixed doubles as he and the Canadian Eugenie Bouchard went down 7-5, 6-4 by the experienced duo of Denmark's Nielsen and Sweden's Sofia Arvidsson.
The Londoner Dominic Inglot and his Filipino partner Treat Huey were ousted, almost inevitably, from the men's doubles by the American top seeds Bob and Mike Bryan, who emerged with a 7-5, 6-3, 7-6 (3) in a third-round encounter.
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