On a day when the schedule went for a toss at the 2016 Wimbledon Championships because of intermittent rainfall, the Indian players were careful not to let the disruptions affect their rhythm. Both Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna won their respective first round matches in men’s doubles in straight sets, making it a grand Friday for Indian fans.
Paes, who won the mixed doubles title at the French Open with Martina Hingis, had it the easier of the two. The Indian, who has teamed up with Polish veteran Marcin Matkowski, needed just 42 minutes to dismiss the challenge of the Taipei-Serbian combination of Yen-Hsun Lu and Janko Tipsarevic, 6-1, 6-3.
The Indo-Polish pair thundered 5 aces and broke their opponents four times in this one-sided contest, without getting broken themselves.
Also read: Wimbledon 2016 Day 5 round-up and highlights
They next face the winner of the match between 10th seeds Henri Kontinen and John Peers and Americans Nicholas Monroe and Donald Young.
Sixth seeds Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea, who were semi-finalists last year, had to grind it out for a two-setter win. The Indo-Romanian duo prevailed 7-5, 7-6(6) over the Croatian team of Nikola Mektic and Marin Draganja.
The closely-fought match that lasted for 1 hour 20 minutes saw just one break of serve secured by the sixth seeds.
They will next square off against the Slovakian-Chilean duo of Andrej Martin and Hans Podlipnik-Castillo.
