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

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.

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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.