US Open: Bopanna knocked out, Sania moves ahead

​New York: India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Canadian partner Gabriela Dabrowski went down fighting in the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles but Sania Mirza maintained her march in the women’s doubles at the US Open tennis tournament.

Bopanna and Gabriela 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 here on Monday. Farah and Groenefeld will now take on the winners of the last eight clash between the seventh seeded American duo of Coco Vandeweghe and Rajeev Ram and the Czech-Crotian combination of Barbora Krejcikova and Marin Draganja.

Seventh seeds Sania Mirza and her Czech partner Barbora Krejcikova defeated unseeded American-Japanese pair of Nicole Gibbs and Nao Hibino 6-4,7-5 in a third round match. They won the match in an hour and 17 minutes, winning 31 winners, 12 more than their opponents and claiming 71 of the total 128 points played. In the opening set of Bopanna’s match, the first three games went with the serve until Bopanna-Gabriela 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. They 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 Gabriela levelled the score once again, Farah and Groenefeld won back-to-back points to wrap up the issue.