India's tennis stars Leander Paes, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna got their French Open campaign off to a winning start, winning their respective women's and men's doubles matches to enter the second round here yesterday
Paris: India's tennis stars Leander Paes, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna got their French Open campaign off to a winning start, winning their respective women's and men's doubles matches to enter the second round here yesterday.
Sania Mirza (right) and Martina Hingis yesterday. Pic/Getty Images
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World No 1 women's doubles pair of Sania and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis defeated Russian pair of Darya Kasatkina and Alexandra Panova 7-6 (4), 6-2 in one hour and 31 minutes.
Leander Paes, partnering Marcin Matkowski beat Alexander Bury and Denis Istomin 7-6 (3), 7-6 (6).
Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna
Bopanna and his Romanian partner Florin Mergea outclassed Frenchmen Stephane Robert and Alexandre Sidorenko 6-2, 6-2 in a one-sided encounter in 56 minutes. The top seeds Indo-Swiss pair Sania-Martina began the match on a positive note, taking a vital 5-0 lead over the Russian pair in the first set.
But a couple of unforced errors and losing two successive serves handed Darya-Alexandra the advantage as they staged a remarkable comeback to make it 5-5 in the first set.