US Open 2023: Rohan Bopanna only Indian in fray after entering round 2 as Bhambri, Saketh Myneni crash out

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Indian tennis stars Yuki Bhambri and Saketh Myneni lost their respective matches in the first round of men’s doubles event at the US Open 2023. 43-year-old Rohan Bopanna, who has paired with Australia's Matthew Ebden progressed to the second round, and is the only Indian left at the Grand Slam event.

No singles players from India made it to the main draw of the US Open 2023. Women's singles player Ankita Raina was knocked out in the third round of the women’s singles qualifiers while Karman Kaur Thandi crashed out in the opening round. Sumit Nagal also couldn’t make it past the first round of the men’s qualifiers.

Rohan Bopanna also entered the second round of the mixed doubles category with his Indonesian partner Aldila Sutijadi after registering a 7-5 6-2 win over Germany’s Andreas Mies and Russian Vera Zvonareva.

The ninth-seeded Polish pair of Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski comfortably beat Bhambri and his Brazilian partner Marcelo Demoliner 6-3, 7-5 in just about 83 minutes.

Saketh Myneni and his Russian partner Alex Karatsev won the first set in tie-breaker but were blown away in the next two by Serbian Laslo Djere and Swiss Marc-Andrea Huesler. The Serb-Swiss pair won 6-7 (4-7), 6-3, 6-2. The match lasted one hour and 44 minutes.

Myneni and his Russian partner couldn’t convert the sole break-point opportunity that they got in the entire match, while the winners were able to win three out of the five in the second and third sets respectively.

Also, the Indo-Russian duo was badly let down by nine double faults and more than double the amount of unforced errors (27) compared to the winners (13).

The sixth-seeded Indo-Australian pair of Bopanna and Matthew Ebden will play their second round men’s doubles match against unseeded duo of Andrey Golubev of Kazakhstan and Russian Roman Safiullin.

Bopanna and Ebden had defeated Christopher O’Connell and Aleksandar Vukic 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the second round.

(With input from PTI)