On a day when the schedule went for a toss at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships because of intermittent rainfall, the Indian players were careful not to let the disruptions affect their rhythm. Both Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna won their respective first round matches in men’s doubles in straight sets, making it a grand Friday for Indian fans.
Paes, who won the mixed doubles title at the French Open with Martina Hingis, had it the easier of the two. The Indian, who has teamed up with Polish veteran Marcin Matkowski, needed just 42 minutes to dismiss the challenge of the Taipei-Serbian combination of Yen-Hsun Lu and Janko Tipsarevic, 6-1, 6-3.
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The Indo-Polish pair thundered 5 aces and broke their opponents four times in this one-sided contest, without getting broken themselves.
They next face the winner of the match between 10th seeds Henri Kontinen and John Peers and Americans Nicholas Monroe and Donald Young.
Sixth seeds Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea, who were semi-finalists last year, had to grind it out for a two-setter win. The Indo-Romanian duo prevailed 7-5, 7-6(6) over the Croatian team of Nikola Mektic and Marin Draganja.
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The closely-fought match that lasted for 1 hour 20 minutes saw just one break of serve secured by the sixth seeds.
They will next square off against the Slovakian-Chilean duo of Andrej Martin and Hans Podlipnik-Castillo.
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About the author
Sudeshna Banerjee
Sudeshna is a veteran Indian Sports and International Tennis journalist as well as editor at Sportskeeda. She has an overall experience of over 10 years with top publications like The Bridge, Fox Sports Asia, and gained a keen interest in Indian sports since the 2002 Commonwealth and Asian Games when she was in school.
Sudeshna holds a Master's degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She attends tournaments regularly and being a highly experienced journalist, she ensures she only contacts the correct people from her network for the most authentic information to be put in her articles.
Sudeshna’s favorite Indian athlete is PV Sindhu owing to her big-tournament performances. She also admires Tennis legend Rafael Nadal for his resilience and has witnessed the Spaniard in action at the French Open, due to which, Roland Garros is her all-time favorite Grand Slam tournament.
Neeraj Chopra’s gold medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics made a lasting impact on Sudeshna. She has also interviewed him along with Badminton star Chirag Shetty and several other sports personalities. She has done on-ground reporting on multiple ITF tournaments along with the Premier Badminton League, Asian Boxing Championships and the Davis Cup.
When not using her skills and years of experience in crafting compelling content, Sudeshna likes to read, watch movies and travel.
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