Bopanna and Matthew Ebden mounted a comeback to win the second set but were broken twice in the decider to lose the semi-final.
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Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden were knocked out of the French Open 2024 men’s doubles event after losing the semi-finals to the Italian pair of Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori in Paris on Thursday.
Competing at the Simonne-Mathieu tennis court, the second-seeded Bopanna and Ebden went down against their 11th-seeded Italian opponents 7-5, 2-6, 6-2 in one hour and 58 minutes.
The 44-year-old Bopanna and Ebden, 36, got off to a good start in the first set of the semi-final. The Australian Open Grand Slam champions held their first serve on love and got the break in the fourth game. However, the Italian pair responded with two breaks and took the first set in 48 minutes.
The Bopanna-Ebden pair started the second set positively and raced to a 3-0 lead. They held on to all of their serves and took the contest into the decider with the second break in the eighth game.
While Bopanna seemed on song in the decider, Ebden, who took multiple medical timeouts, looked in discomfort. The Italian duo broke Ebden’s service games twice to seal their places in the final of the French Open.
Earlier in the quarter-final, Bopanna and Ebden held off Belgium’s Joran Vliegen and Sander Gille, the tenth seeds, in three sets.
This was Bopanna’s second men’s doubles semis at Roland Garros in three years. The Indian ace and his Dutch partner Matwe Middelkoop made the top four in 2022 but lost to eventual champions Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Rojer.
Bopanna’s only French Open Grand Slam title came in the mixed doubles with Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski back in 2017. At the French Open 2024, Bopanna lost the first round in the mixed doubles with his partner Veronika Kudermetova.
Bopanna was the only Indian to reach the semi-finals at Roland Garros this year.
N Sriram Balaji and his Mexican partner Miguel Angel Reyes-Varela lost to Bopanna-Ebden in the third round of men’s doubles while Sumit Nagal was knocked in the first round of the men’s singles.