French Open 2023 tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden crash out in first round

Indian tennis veteran Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden suffered a first-round exit from the French Open 2023 men’s doubles event at the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris on Wednesday.

The Indo-Australian duo, seeded sixth, were eliminated after losing to the French team of Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul 7-5, 7(7)-6(5) in one hour and 39 minutes.

Rohan Bopanna, who recently climbed up to world No. 9 in ATP rankings for doubles, and Matthew Ebden, world No. 17, got off to a strong start against world No. 46 Fabien Reboul and world No. 47 Sadio Doumbia.

The Indo-Australian tennis duo took the first game of the first set with a break. However, a couple of unforced errors in the second game and a double fault in the 12th game proved to be their undoing as they went on to trail 1-0.

Neither team could find a break in the second set. Bopanna and Ebden did well to save multiple match points when they were serving in the 12th game and managed to take the set into the tiebreaker.

Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul, however, started the tiebreaker with a couple of impressive winners and clinched it 7-5 to progress to the next round.

Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden won the Indian Wells Masters in March by defeating the current world No. 1 team of Wesley Koolhof and Neil Skupski in the final.

Bopanna and Ebden also bagged the Qatar Open in February. Rohan Bopanna won the mixed doubles title at French Open 2017 with Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski. However, he won’t participate in mixed doubles this year.

The Indian tennis pair of Yuki Bhambri and Saketh Myneni, meanwhile, put on a dominant display in their opening round of the French Open, easily defeating the local wildcard pairing of Arthur Rinderknech and Enzo Couacaud 6-3, 6-2.

It was also the first Grand Slam match victory for Yuki Bhambri and Saketh Myneni as a pair. They suffered a first-round exit from the Australian Open 2023 after entering as wildcards.

The Indian duo began well and came close to breaking the French pair in the second game. Eventually, Yuki Bhambri and Saketh Myneni found the break in the fourth game and went on to take a 1-0 lead in the match.

The second set saw the Indian team quickly establish a healthy lead by winning the first two games. Yuki Bhambri and Saketh Myneni delivered some strong returns which proved too much for the French pair, who could not match the Indian duo's intensity.

The win helped the Indian combo set up a second-round encounter against Edouard Roger-Vasselin of France, a former French Open men’s doubles champion, and world No. 20 Santiago Gonzalez of Mexico.

The Indian team of N Sriram Balaji and Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan, who entered the main draw as alternates, lost to Ilya Ivashka and Alexei Popyrin of Australia 6-3, 6-4 in the first round.

Earlier, Asian Games bronze medallist Ankita Raina, who was the only Indian player to take part in the singles competition, bowed out from the qualifiers after losing to world No. 145 Moyuka Uchijima of Japan in straight games.

The French Open 2023 will conclude on June 11.