With focus on big titles, Rohan Bopanna talks about his love for clay and clicking with Cuevas

Heading into the French Open, Rohan Bopanna, along with doubles partner Pablo Cuevas, has had an eventful clay court season so far, to say the least.

The then unseeded Indo-Uruguayan pair stormed through the top seeds and defending French Open champions Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez to claim the title at the Monte Carlo Masters. However, that was followed by first round losses at the Barcelona Open, to top seeds Henri Kontinen and John Peers who they had beaten just days ago, and the Madrid Masters to Fabrice Martin and Daniel Nestor. At the Rome Masters, they once again upset Lopez-Lopez to reach the quarter-finals but went down to Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut. Now, the pair are getting ready to make their mark at the French Open, a tournament that Cuevas has won once before, back in 2008. They are seeded ninth and will start their campaign against the French pair of Mathias Bourgue and Pauk-Henri Mathieu.

Talking to Scroll.in, Bopanna was all praise for his partner Cuevas, who is currently ranked 23 in both singles and doubles. “Pablo is such a good player, not only in doubles in singles as well. He understands the game well and it’s easy for me to get along with him and that makes a big difference,” the highest-ranked Indian men’s doubles players said.

The duo, who joined forces at the start of the season, have developed a strong partnership, despite a shaky start. “The way Pablo and me had started, (it was) not so great in the first three months. Monte Carlo was our first tournament together in the clay court season… In every match we grew in confidence and it also helped that we were spending more time with each other on court and understanding each other and the partnership and that made a difference,” said Bopanna.

 “Winning a tournament as big as Monte Carlo Masters was really special. You have all the top teams playing there, it’s a very strong draw and you have to play your best tennis in order to win the title and I am glad that the Pablo and I played really well that week and we enjoyed playing with each other. It was an overwhelming experience for me and a great start to the clay court season.”  

“When you get to a certain level in your career and your rankings, you are focusing more on winning the bigger titles, which makes a big difference,” the 22nd-ranked Indian added.

It wasn’t all smooth-sailing with Bopanna-Cuevas playing as many as four Super Tiebreakers en route the win, including the finals against Lopez and Lopez. In doubles, the decider after two sets is essentially a do-or-die tiebreak for 10 points – a lot like sudden death. However, the idea of replacing a deciding set by a tiebreaker is not a universally popular concept among doubles players.

Bopanna put his thoughts on the Super Tiebreaker succinctly – “You live by it you die by it.”

“We lost three super tie breaks before coming on to clay and then we won four in a row. That’s how the rules are, sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t. But we were playing good tennis, not like we were playing bad as a team,” he added.

As a team, they may have had a mixed season on clay, especially considering Bopanna’s steady run last year. But the 37-year-old has learnt to enjoy playing on the red dirt, a surface that is not everyone’s favourite. “Last year my best season was on clay. I made the finals in Madrid, semis in Rome, quarters in French,” he said. “I enjoy playing on the clay, obviously it takes me a couple of weeks to get used to the movement on the clay but I have begun to enjoy it in the past couple of years. In the initial years of my career I didn’t like it as much, but I have learned to adapt my style to the surface and that has helped me enjoy the surface much better.”

“I am playing with Pablo who I think is one of the really good clay court players and his best surface just makes us a strong team,” Bopanna added. And rightly so. Cuevas is on a good individual run this clay court season, reaching the semifinal at Madrid in addition to the quarterfinal appearance at Monte Carlo. He even played the South American clay season, reaching the final of the Brasil Open this year, a tourney he had won last year along with Rio Open.

But how does Cuevas’ singles career affect their doubles partnership? The Uruguayan has not partnered Bopanna at all the events this year, in fact, and the Indian’s three final appearances have been with three different partners. “The tough part there is that you do not have enough time to practice together because he is playing a lot of singles,” Bopanna said.

“The ideal situation is to have one partner and keep going with him but at certain times there are situations when I had to find other partners. Obviously in Chennai, Pablo wasn’t coming [to Chennai Open] for singles, he was taking that week off. I wanted to play that week especially since that’s the home tournament and it’s always special to play at home. Luckily I got a great partner in Jeevan [Nedunchezhiyan] and we managed to win the tournament. In February he was playing on the clay in South America and he wanted to focus on singles. He asked me if I could find someone else to play with that’s how I found [Marcin] Matkowski and we made the finals in Dubai,” said Bopanna.

“I get along with most people that way and it makes it easy to go out and play,” he added.

But there is a bright side to it as well. “If he is playing good in singles, then he is definitely seeing the ball better and playing sharp tennis so that’s an advantage. If he doesn’t do well in singles, there is more time to focus on doubles, so there are always positives, whichever you way you look at it. At the end of the day, you have to look at the positives,” an optimistic Bopanna said.

“Pablo as a player is very committed... He is always fit and that is something that helps me as his partner – that I know that even after playing a long singles match he is ready to come out there and fight and win the doubles also,” the Indian said.

But for Bopanna, whose sole focus is the doubles, the eye is still on the ultimate prize – a Grand Slam title. “The goal of winning a Grand Slam is a personal one,” he emphasised.

“As an athlete you always want to grow ahead. Like at Monte Carlo, the highest I had reached was semifinals, so the next step for me was to reach the finals or win the tournament, which happened this year. Similarly in a Grand Slam, I have made the final of the US Open, [in 2010 with Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi] so I am always looking to better that and that’s what I like to keep as my target. As a personal goal this is what I look into doing when I am playing a Grand Slam. It’s your hard work and your commitment to it and no one else’s so that is what I like to challenge myself,” Bopanna added.

At Roland Garros, the ninth-seeded pair will not have an easy ride. The then 15th seeds were knocked out of this year’s Australian Open in the second rounds by Aussie wildcards Alex Bolt and Bradley Mousley. In Paris, they are placed in the same section as fifth seeds Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares. But if Bopanna’s belief and their performance at Monte Carlo is anything to go by, they are more than capable of springing a surprise.