Indian tennis stars Leander Paes, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna began their US Open campaign on a sound note, winning their respective opening round matches at Flushing Meadows here.
Advertisement
Veteran Paes and his mixed doubles partner Martina Hingis also had a light workout at the court, securing a 6-3, 6-2 win against Americans Sachia Vickery and Frances Tiafoe.
She and her Czech partner Barbora Strycova were comfortable in the 6-2, 7-6 (5) win over Swiss-American pair of Viktorija Golubic and Nicole Melichar at Court 5.
Bopanna and his Danish partner, Frederik Nielsen, went down to American Brian Baker and New Zealand’s Marcus Daniell 6-2, 7-6 (5).
Top seed Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Angelique Kerber, Roberta Vinci and Petra Kvitova have already made it to the pre-quarter-finals. The Serb advanced to the third round where he, after three days off, will be facing Russia’s Mikhail Youzhny on Friday.
“It was probably just nerves and stress, a mental sort of over-exuberance”, Raonic said.
It was turning out to be a cakewalk for the Kiwi-US pair as they were ready to serve for the match at 5-3 before Bopanna-Nielsen broke back to make it 5-5 raising visions of a fightback.
Sania Mirza, of India, returns a shot during the second round of women’s double play at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016, in NY.
Bopanna, who hasn’t had a great run in the Grand Slams of late as the Indo-Danish pair were broken twice before they conceded the first set 6-2.
Advertisement
“I stopped looking at the ranking once I fell out of the top 10”, the 26-year-old said.
