French Open: Mixed day for India as Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna win, Leander Paes misses out

It was a frenetic day for Indian tennis players at the French Open on Friday, with both wins and defeats dotting the results.

Sania Mirza and Ivan Dodig make inroads in mixed doubles

The second seeded Indo-Croatian team of Sania Mirza and Ivan Dodig won their mixed doubles opening round against the Croatian pairing of Darija Jurak and Mate Pavic. Mirza and Dodig needed an hour and 24 minutes to wrap up the win in straight sets, 7-5, 6-3.

Mirza and Dodig converted six of the seven break point chances they faced, but could only save two of the six break points on their serve. The higher ranked team won 66% points on their first serves to the Croatians’ winning 58% points. Both teams, however, fared poorly when it came to their points conversion off their respective second serves. Mirza and Dodig could only manage to win 35% of their second serve points, while Jurak and Pavic converted 39% points.

In the second round, Mirza and Dodig will play the Ukrainian-New Zealand pair of Elina Svitolina and Artem Sitak.

Tough luck for Martina Hingis and Leander Paes

Mirza’s former doubles partner, Martina Hingis, however, had to face an early exit from the tournament. The Swiss, and her partner, Indian veteran Leander Paes, lost to the fourth seeded Slovenian-South African team of Katarina Srebotnik and Raven Klaasen in their first round. Srebotnik and Klaasen won 4-6, 6-1, 10-6 in an hour.

The Indo-Swiss duo, who were unseeded in the draw, couldn’t make any inroads in their opponents’ serve in the opening set. Facing three break points on their serve in the set, Hingis and Paes saved two, but couldn’t save the third as Srebotnik and Klaasen took the lead in the match. The second set, however, turned out differently with Hingis and Paes converting both break points on their opponents’ serve to take the set 6-1 and the match into the deciding tie-break. In the super tie-break, the match went in favour of the fourth seeds, with them racing away to the 10-point advantage with a four-point advantage.

Following his loss in the mixed doubles, Paes’ road at the 2017 French Open came to an end, as earlier on Friday, he and Scott Lipsky lost their men’s doubles second round tie.

Rohan Bopanna and Pablo Cuevas stay on course

Rohan Bopanna and Pablo Cuevas moved into the men’s doubles pre-quarter-finals with a win over Philippines’ Treat Huey and Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin. The ninth seeded Indo-Uruguayan duo overturned a loss in the first set to secure a hard-fought 5-7, 7-6(4), 6-4 win in two hours and 14 minutes.

Both teams exchanged breaks of serve in the first set, but it was the unseeded team that gained the lead after getting a second break to build up the momentum in the match. In the second set, there were no service breaks despite the numerous chances both teams had. In the resulting tie-break, the seeded team shifted the momentum back in their favour by taking the tie-break 7-4 and enforcing the third set.

Much like in the first set, both teams traded breaks, but Bopanna and Cuevas secured an additional break to win the match. In the third round, they will take on the fifth seeded British-Brazilian duo of Jamie Murray and Bruno Soares.