Safina wilts under Peer pressure

By Pritha Sarkar

LONDON (Reuters) - Ninth seed Dinara Safina missed setting up a rematch with fellow Russian Elena Dementieva when she was harried out of Wimbledon in the third round, beaten 7-5 6-7 8-6 by Israel's Shahar Peer on Saturday.

The French Open finalist, who had come within a point of defeat in successive matches at Roland Garros earlier this month, raised hopes of staging another great escape on Saturday.

In a topsy-turvy contest featuring angry outbursts, medical timeouts and code violations, Safina saved match points -- at 4-5 down in the second set and 5-6 down in the decider.

Hobbling around with a painful thigh, Safina eventually limped out on Peer's fourth match point, falling after three hours and 25 minutes with a tame double fault.

Dementieva, though, would have let out a huge sigh of relief at being spared another encounter with Safina.

The last time they met, in the French Open quarter-finals, Dementieva came within a point of defeating Safina but ended up as the loser.

In a scene that was all too familiar for Safina fans, the Russian trailed 5-7 2-4 before she began her fightback.

She leveled for 4-4 after punishing Peer with a string of brutal forehands but two games later she was tottering on the brink of elimination.

She tipped a backhand beyond the baseline to gift her opponent a match point but Peer lacked the self-belief to finish it off and hit a backhand into the net.

FURIOUS RALLY

Energized by her stroke of luck, Safina immediately drew Peer into a furious 32-shot rally and ended it by smashing away an overhead.

After leveling for 5-5, she compounded the Israeli's frustrations by streaking through the tiebreak 7-4.

With the momentum clearly behind her, Safina grabbed an early break in the decider.

But the exertions on a hot court 11 started to catch up with her and she took an injury time out while leading 4-3. The trainer rubbed down her right thigh and also applied an ice pack to the stricken area.

But it failed to cool down the hot-headed Russian and she exploded in the ninth game when Peer was serving to stay in the match.