Bopanna-Mergea enter quarters in Madrid

ByArun S Kaimal, SportsCafe Editor

05/06/2016

Indian tennis star Rohan Bopanna and Romanian Florin Mergea entered the quarters of the men’s doubles at the Mutua Madrid Open on Friday. In a tightly contested second round match, which was always in the balance, Bopanna-Mergea kept their nerve to come back from a set down for a 6-7, 6-4, 10-4 win.

Sixth seeded pair Bopanna-Mergea didn’t get off to the best of starts, dropping in only 62% of their first serves compared to the 72% Cuevas-Granollers dropped in. But, the Indo-Romanian pair managed to consolidate the only break their opponent surrendered to take the set to a tiebreak. The unseeded Uruguayan-Spanish pair won the tiebreaker 7-4, with a couple of mini-breaks. Bopanna-Mergea came back strongly to take the second set 6-4, winning 76% of their first serves in the set and not conceding a single break.

The decider was much more straight forward though, with the Indo-Colombian pair winning 10-4 to wrap up the match in 1 hour and 28 minutes.

Bopanna-Mergea will next face the pairing of Henri Kontinen and John Peers in the quarter-final on Friday night.