On a day of contrasting fortunes for Indian players at the Madrid Open, Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna won their respective doubles matches but Mahesh Bhupathi crashed out. Sania was the one who had it easy at the Caja Magica on Thursday as she and Martina Hingis cruised into the women’s doubles semi-finals with a 6-3, 6-2 win over sixth seeds Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka.
The top seeds will next take on the unseeded but dangerous duo of Vania King and Alla Kudryavtseva.
Tough win for Bopanna and Mergea
The defending men’s doubles champions Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea were subjected to a stern test as they recovered from a set down to beat unseeded challengers Pablo Cuevas and Marcel Granollers, 6(4)-7, 6-4, 10-4. The Indo-Romanian combine was broken thrice in this contest which included a break in the second set too.
But they bounced back to make in-roads into their opponents’ serve twice to grab the set and then dominated the ensuing match tie-break. They will meet John Peers and Henri Kontinen for a place in the semi-finals on Friday.
Mahesh Bhupathi and Fabrice Martin, however, were not as lucky. The unseeded Indo-French duo fought hard but eventually went down 3-6, 6-4, 6-10 to the seventh seeds Nenad Zimonjic and Alexander Peya in the second round.
