New York: India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Pakistan partner Aisam Qureshi suffered a first round defeat in the men’s doubles of the US Open tennis here at the Flushing Meadows.
Bopanna and Qureshi, who were seeded 13th, went down 6-7 (10-12), 6-4, 6-7 (5-7) to the unseeded Italian pair of Daniele Bracciali and Andreas Seppi on Tuesday.
It was a tough battle for Bopanna and Qureshi that lasted 152 minutes. The Indo-Pakistan pair managed 11 aces in the first set but also committed nine double faults and lost it.
They clawed back well into the match by winning the second set 6-4 in 39 minutes. But the Italian pair performed clinically in the third set and moved into the second round where they would be facing the winner of the match between Kazakh Mikhail Kukushkin and New Zealand’s Michael Venus and Feliciano Lopez of Spain and Argentina’s Juan Monaco.
The other Indian in the fray, Leander Paes, and his Czech partner Radek Stepanek, who are seeded sixth, will face off the Italian pair of Simone Bolelli and Fabio Fognini.
