Indian tennis player Leander Paes, partnering Swiss Martina Hingis, entered the second round, while his compatriot Rohan Bopanna, with Kazakh partner Yaroslava Shvedova, crashed out from the first round of mixed doubles at the French Open.
The eighth seeded Paes-Hingis pair totally outclassed Russian Alla Kudryavtseva and her Colombian partner Juan Sebastian Cabal 6-2, 6-3 to enter the second round of the clay court Major on Thursday. The Indo-Swiss pair next face the Slovenian-Romanian pair of Katarina Srebotnik and Horia Tecau at Stade Roland Garros.
It was an easy win for Paes and Hingis as they had full control of the match right from the start, winning 88 percent of first serve points and 62 percent of second serve points. They broke their opponents thrice out of seven opportunities and won 53 of the 89 points played.
Earlier, the Bopanna-Shvedova pair fought hard but their efforts went in vain as they were beaten 6-7(5), 6-0, 3-10 by the Czech-Polish combine of Lucie Hradecka and Marcin Matkowski.
The first set was a tight contest that had to be settled by a tie-breaker, which went in favour of Hradecka and Matkowski. However, the Indo-Kazakh pair came back strongly to win all six games of the second set and push the match in to the decider. But they failed to make an impact in the super tie-break, losing easily by a score of 3-10.
{{/usCountry}}The first set was a tight contest that had to be settled by a tie-breaker, which went in favour of Hradecka and Matkowski. However, the Indo-Kazakh pair came back strongly to win all six games of the second set and push the match in to the decider. But they failed to make an impact in the super tie-break, losing easily by a score of 3-10.
{{/usCountry}}Top-seeded Mirza-Soares upset
India's Sania Mirza and Brazil's Bruno Soares, top seeds in the mixed doubles, crashed out of Roland Garros after being upset by the unseeded German-Dutch pair of Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Jean-Julien Roger in the first round.
The top seeds lost 2-6, 2-6 in just 56 minutes after being broken in their first service game and quickly went down 0-3 in the first set. Mirza-Soares converted just two of their four break points to lose the first set in 28 minutes.
Both teams held serve in the first four games of the second set before Groenefeld and Roger broke serve for a 3-2 lead. They broke serve again in the seventh game and completed a comfortable win.
They will face Yung-Jan Chan of Chinese Taipei and John Peers of Australia in the second round.