It was a good day at the office at the US Open for Indian tennis players as Leander Paes, Rohan Bopanna and Sania Mirza won their respective doubles and mixed doubles encounters at Flushing Meadows on Thursday.
Mirza and her Czech partner Barbora Strycova, seeded seventh, won their opening match in the women’s doubles, beating Americans Ena Shibahara and Jada Hart 6-3, 6-2. Mirza and Strycova needed just over an hour to dispose of their opponents, who never threatened an upset.
In the mixed doubles, unseeded defending champions Leander Paes and Martina Hingis defeated Americans Sachia Vickery and Frances Tiafoe 6-3, 6-2. They were on court for just 51 minutes and were at their dominating best. Mirza and her Croatian partner Ivan Dodig are the top seeds in the event.
Rohan Bopanna and his Danish partner Frederik Nielsen had to dig deep against 16th seeds Radek Stepanek and Nenad Zimonjic in the men’s doubles encounter. Bopanna and Nielsen, who are unseeded, won the encounter 6-3, 7-6(3), 6-3 in a match that lasted nearly two hours.
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