Bhupathi-Bopanna enters quarters, Paes & Sania ousted

The Mahesh Bhupathi-Rohan Bopanna pair entered the quarter-finals of the men's doubles event while Leander Paes and Sania Mirza made an exit with their respective partners at the Madrid Open, on Thursday.

The Mahesh Bhupathi-Rohan Bopanna pair entered the quarter-finals of the men's doubles event while Leander Paes and Sania Mirza made an exit with their respective partners at the Madrid Open, on Thursday.

The sixth-seeded pair of Bhupathi and Bopanna defeated the Argentine pair of Juan Monaco and Horacio Zeballos 6-3 3-6 10-5 in a hard-fought contest to make it to the last eight of the competition, which is considered to be warm-up event for the French Open.

However it was a disappointing day in office for Paes and his Austrian partner Jurgen Melzer. The German-Czech combination of Tommy Haas and Radek Stepanek hardly broke a sweat as they beat the Indo-Austrian combination in straight sets 7-5 6-1.

In the women's event, the fifth seeded pair of Sania and Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the United States were beaten by Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Lucie Safarova. The Russian pair won by 7-5 6-1 margin.

Bhupathi and Bopanna showed more consistency in their both first and service. They won 76% points on their first serve compared to 68% of their opponents.

The Indian pair fared better in the second serve also as they won 67% points compared to only 50% by the Argentine pair.

In the end, Bhupati-Bopanna prevailed as they pipped their opponents by 60 to 53 in the total points in the offing.

Leander and Melzer were off-colour as the Haas-Stepanek pair broke their service on four occasions which was testimony to the supremacy of the German-Czech duo.

In terms of the total number of points, Haas-Stepanek won 58% while Paes-Mlezer could win only 42% of the points.