On Thursday, India’s Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza won contrasting matches with their respective partners in the men’s and women’s doubles categories at the French Open.
While Bopanna and his Dutch partner Matwe Middelkoop advanced to the pre-quarterfinals with a straight-set victory over Andrey Golubev and Fabrice Martin, Sania teamed up with Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic to defeat Italian duo Jasmine Paolini and Martina Trevisan in three sets in their first round. In one hour and six minutes, Bopanna and Middelkoop won the second round match 6-3, 6-4.
Sania and Lucie defeated Jasmine and Martina 4-6 6-2 6-1 in an hour and 58-minute match later in the day.
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In another second-round men’s doubles encounter, Ramkumar Ramanathan and his American partner Hunter Reese lost 3-6 2-6 to the sixth-seeded pair of Wesley Koolhof of the Netherlands and Great Britain’s Neal Skupski.
Bopanna and Middelkoop, seeded 16th, had already broken the Kazakhstan-French duo at 4-4 in the second set, and then Middelkoop served out the match at love.
The last-eight stage appearances in 2011, 2016, 2018, and 2021 are Bopanna’s greatest results at the clay-court major.
