NEW YORK – India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Canadian partner Gabriela Dabrowski went down fighting in the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles competition at the US Open tennis tournament here on Sept. 5.
Bopanna and Dabrowski enjoyed a strong start before going down 6-1, 2-6, 8-10 to Robert Farah of Columbia and Germany‘s Anna-Lena Groenefeld in 58 minutes.
In the opening set, the first three games went with the serve until Bopanna and Dabrowski clinched a service break to take a 3-1 lead.
They then held their serve before forcing consecutive service breaks to win the first set.
Farah and Groenefeld staged a strong comeback in the second set, breaking their opponents in the fourth game to take the upper hand. The earned another service break in the eigth game to win the second set and draw level.
In the tie-breaker, the Indo-Canadian combination started strongly, taking a 4-0 lead before Farah and Groenefeld won four consecutive points to draw level.
Bopanna and Gabriela regained the lead at 7-5 but Farah and Groenefeld fought back, winning three points on the trot to take the lead.
Although Bopanna and Dabrowski levelled the score once again, Farah and Groenefeld won back-to-back points to wrap up the issue.
Two days earlier, veteran Leander Paes’ U.S. Open campaign came to an end as he was beaten in a second-round mixed doubles match at Flushing Meadows.
Paes-Hingis were beaten 6-7 (1), 6-3, 11-13 by American seventh seeds Rajeev Ram and Coco Vandeweghe at Court 5 here Sept. 3.
The match was closely fought. Paes-Hingis led 8-4 in the match deciding tie-breaker but then fell apart.
The defeat ended Paes’ US Open campaign as he lost in the men’s doubles tournament with Andre Begemann on Sept. 2.