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Murray and Huber: Beaten in final set
Jamie Murray lost his grip on the Wimbledon mixed doubles title on Friday night as he and Liezel Huber bowed out in the semi-finals.
The British doubles specialist, partnered by the South African-born American, went down 2-6 7-6 (7/1) 6-4 to Bob Bryan and Samantha Stosur on Centre Court.
Murray, who won the title last year with Jelena Jankovic, and Huber dominated the opening set, breaking Stosur's serve twice as their opponents struggled.
However, Bryan and Stosur found their feet in the second and quickly moved 3-0 ahead with Murray losing his delivery.
But they unexpectedly hit back by breaking Bryan's booming serve as he served for the set at 5-3 and a tie-break resulted.
Murray and Huber - the Briton in particular - played a poor breaker though. They won just the one point as Bryan and Stosur forced a final set.
As in the first set, Murray and Huber targeted Stosur's serve in the decider. However, on this occasion she came up with the answers.
In both of her service games, the Australian staved off break points and then when Murray stepped up to serve at 4-4, Bryan and Stosur struck.
Tough
Murray, never at his best, produced a double fault to hand the game away and although Bryan fell 15-40 down as he attempted to serve out, he recovered to book a place in the final, sealing victory with an ace.
Murray felt the loss was tough on him and Huber.
He said: "Today we played our best match of the tournament. I felt we were the better team but sadly we couldn't get through.
"They played tough on the big points.''
Murray expects to continue in his partnership with Huber, the number one-ranked doubles player in the women's game, for some time.
"We're probably one of the better teams playing in the mixed,'' he said.
"We enjoy playing together. I'm sure we'll play the US Open together and I don't see why (we wouldn't play Wimbledon next year too).''
Bryan will face his twin brother Mike in Sunday's final.
Mike and Katarina Srebotnik, the top seeds, proved too good for the Russian pairing of Igor Andreev and Maria Kirilenko, winning the other semi-final 6-4 6-2.
