Good start for Sania, Bopanna, Paes
PARIS: Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna got their French Open campaign off to a winning start as the duo won their respective women’s doubles and men’s doubles matches to enter the second round here on Wednesday.
World No.1 women’s doubles pair of Sania and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis defeated Russian pair of Darya Kasatkina and Alexandra Panova 7-6 (4), 6-2 in one hour and 31 minutes.
Bopanna and his Romanian partner Florin Mergea outclassed Frenchmen Stephane Robert and Alexandre Sidorenko 6-2, 6-2 in a one-sided encounter in 56 minutes.
Leander Paes joined the duo with a hardfought victory in the first round of men’s doubles with partner Marcin Matkowski. The Indo-Pole duo, seeded 16th, battled past Aliaksandr Bury and Denis Istomin with a 7-6 (3), 7-6 (6) victory.
Sania-Martina began the match on a positive note, taking a vital 5-0 lead over the Russian pair in the first set. But a couple of unforced errors and losing two successive serves handed Darya-Alexandra the advantage as they staged a remarkable comeback to make it 5-5 in the first set. From there on it came down to 6-6 and the Indo-Swiss pair held their nerves to win the tie-breaker 7-4 to grab the first set.