French Open: Paes, Bopanna knocked out of men's doubles

Paris, June 1 (IANS) India's tennis stars Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna suffered a huge setback as the duo were knocked out in the quarter-finals of their respective men's doubles event of the French Open tennis tournament here on Wednesday.

The third seeded pair of Croatia's Ivan Dodig and Brazil's Marcelo Melo defeated sixth seeds Bopanna and his Romanian partner Florin Mergea 6-4, 6-4 in one hour 15 minutes in the quarter-finals to progress into the semi-finals of the tournament.

Meanwhile, the fifth seeded American pair of Bob Bryan and his brother Mike outclassed the 16th seeded duo of Paes and his Polish partner Marcin Matkowski 7-6 (12), 6-3 in one hour and 39 minutes in the quarters to enter the last four stage.

The match between Dodig-Melo and Bopanna-Mergea began on positive note for both sides as they won their respective games to make it 3-3. But Dodig-Melo broke their opponents' serve at a crucial juncture of the set to grab the advantage.

The third seeds made the best use of the advantage to win all their serves thereafter to claim the first set 6-4.

In the second set, the Croatian-Brazilian combine dominated the proceedings as they broke Bopanna-Mergea yet again to seize the initiative and went on to win the set 6-4 and claim the match.

Later on, Paes-Matkowski got their match off to a positive start against a tough Bryan brothers. Both the sides displayed their best winning individual games and breaking their opponent once each to take the set to 6-6. The set then went into the tie-breaker.

The tie-breaker saw a intense battle and the set was eventually decided when Bryan brothers edged past their opponent beating them 14-12 to take 1-0 lead in the quarters.

In the second set, it was a one-sided affair as the fifth seeds Bob and Mike broke Paes and Matkowski's serve twice to grab the set 6-3 and comfortably cruise into the last four stage of the event.

--IANS

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