French Open 2017: Leander Paes, Rohan Bopanna advance; Sania Mirza knocked out in first round

Rohan Bopanna and Leander Paes on Wednesday crossed the first-round hurdle in men’s doubles with their respective partners while Sania Mirza crashed out of the women’s doubles after a first-round loss at the French Open.

Bopanna along with his Uruguayan partner Pablo Cuevas hardly comfortably won their match after they outplayed the French duo of Mathias Bourgue and Paul-Henri Mathieu in a one-sided contest.

The ninth-seeded Indo-Uruguayan pair posted an easy 6-1 6-1 victory over French combination in just 53 minutes.  They will next take on Treat Huey and Denis Istomin.

Later in the day, Paes and his American partner defeated Radu Albot of Moldova and Hyeon Chung of South Korea 7-6 (7-5), 4-6, 6-2 in a match lasting one hour 55 minutes.

However, fourth-seeded pair of Sania and Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan were stunned by unseeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia and Australia’s Daria Gavrilova in a hard-fought match.

Sania and Shvedova went down 6-7 (5-7) 6-1 2-6 to Pavlyuchenkova and Gavrilova in a gruelling battle that lasted 2 hours and 23 minutes.

(With PTI Inputs)