French Open 2024 tennis: Rohan Bopanna makes second men’s doubles semi-finals at Roland Garros

Bopanna and Matthew Ebden beat Belgium’s Joran Vliegen and Sander Gille in the quarter-finals. Bopanna had made the 2022 semis with Matwe Middelkoop.

2 minBy Utathya Nag
Rohan Bopanna and Matt Ebden

(Getty Images)

India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden cruised into the men’s doubles semi-finals at the French Open 2024 tennis tournament in Paris on Wednesday.

The second-seeded Bopanna and Ebden, who won the Australian Open Grand Slam title earlier this year, managed to hold off Belgium’s Joran Vliegen and Sander Gille, the tenth seeds, by a 7(7)-6(3), 5-7, 6-1 scoreline in their quarter-final fixture to make top four.

Victory in the three-set affair means Bopanna made his second men’s doubles semis at Roland Garros within a span of 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 has won the mixed doubles title at the French Open with Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski back in 2017.

On Wednesday, neither team managed to carve out a break point opportunity in the first set before Bopanna-Ebden finally clinched it in the tie-breaker. The Belgian team responded in the second set and broke their opponents in the 11th game to draw level.

The Indo-Australian pair shifted gears in the third set and converted break points in the second and sixth games to cruise to a victory. The match lasted just over two hours.

Bopanna and Ebden will face Italian 11th seeds Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori in the semis. Bolelli and Vavassori earned their berth in the top four after upsetting the third-seeded team of USA’s Rajeev Ram and Great Britain’s Joe Salisbury in the quarter-finals.

Bopanna, who exited the mixed doubles event at the French Open 2024 in first round, is the lone Indian left fighting at Roland Garros. N Sriram Balaji and his Mexican partner Miguel Angel Reyes-Varela lost to Bopanna-Ebden in the third round of men’s doubles.

Sumit Nagal, meanwhile, faced a first round exit from men’s singles.

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