Australian Open | Bopanna-Babos enter mixed doubles QF; Nadal concedes match mid-way due to leg injury
In what was a proud moment for Indian Tennis fans all over the world, the pair of Rohan Bopanna and his partner Timea Babos reached the quarters of the mixed doubles at the Australian Open. Last year’s finalist Rafael Nadal bowed out due to a leg injury during the match against Marin Cilic.
After facing defeat with partner Divij Sharan in the men's doubles event on Thursday, Rohan Bopanna along with Hungarian partner Timea Babos bounced back with a victory against the pair of USA’s Vania King and Croatia’s Franko Skugor and beat them 6-4 6-4 at the Melbourne Park.
The match, which lasted a little over an hour, saw Bopanna and Babos break in the third game of the opening set to take a 2-1 lead. In the fifth game of the second set, Bopanna and Babos broke Skugor’s and made it 3-2. The Indo-Hungarian pair sent down eight aces compared to their opponents’ five.
Bopanna now remains the only Indian in the title contention at the Australian Open. He along with partner Timea Babos will face the unseeded pair of Juan Sebastian Cabal from Colombia and Abigail Spears from the USA in the quarter-finals tomorrow.
Last year’s runner-up of men's singles, Rafael Nadal faced a disappointing. end to his sojourn in the league as he bowed out of the quarter-finals due to an apparent leg injury while trailing Marin Cilic 3-6, 6-3, 6-7, 6-2, 2-0. The sixth-seeded Croatian now have entered his fifth Grand Slam semi-final and will meet Great Britain’s
In other news, British player Kyle Edmund has produced one of the biggest upsets of the Australian Open, beating third-seeded Grigor Dimitrov in four sets at the Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday afternoon. The world number 49's best result at a major tournament before this year had been a fourth-round exit at the 2016 US Open, but he proved too strong for Dimitrov, winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.
