Australian Open 2024 tennis: Rohan Bopanna marches into third round of men’s doubles

Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden made the third round of the men’s doubles event at the Australian Open 2024 with an easy straight-sets win in Melbourne Park on Friday.

Second seeds Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden comfortably defeated the Australian wild card team of John Millman and Edward Winter by a 6-2, 6-4 scoreline in their second round fixture at the first Grand Slam of the year.

The Indo-Australian pair, who had to dig deep to defeat another Aussie wildcard team of James Duckworth and Marc Polmans in the opening round, had little trouble on Friday.

After the first set was tied at 2-2, Bopanna and Ebden broke Millman’s serve in the fifth game before picking up another break point in the seventh and took the lead.

In the second game, the world No. 4 pair of Bopanna-Ebden broke their opponent’s serve as early as in the third game and closed out the match in one hour and seven minutes.

Bopanna-Ebden will come across the Netherland's Wesley Koolhof and Nikola Mektic of Croatia, the 14th seeds, in the third round.

The 43-year-old Bopanna is also competing in the mixed doubles event, where he has partnered with Hungarian Tímea Babos. The duo will start their campaign on Saturday.

Meanwhile, India’s N Sriram Balaji, making his Grand Slam debut, and his Romanian partner Victor Vlad Cornea made it to the second round of the men’s doubles competition, with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Italian duo Matteo Arnaldi and Andrea Pellegrino.

Balaji and Cornea, however, will have their work cut out for them in the second round clash against El Salvador’s Marcelo Arevalo and Croatian Mate Pavic, the 10th-seeded team in the 2024 Australian Open men’s doubles draw.