Paes and Bopanna likely to clash in Wimbledon pre-quarters

Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna, who will represent India at the Rio Olympics as a team, may clash against each other at the Wimbledon pre-quarterfinals as they have been drawn in the top-half of the draw at the men’s doubles event.

A file picture of Rohan Bopanna and Leander Paes.

Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna, who will represent India at the Rio Olympics as a team, may clash against each other at the Wimbledon pre-quarterfinals as they have been drawn in the top-half of the draw at the men’s doubles event.

Bopanna and his Romanian partner Florin Mergea, seeded sixth, open their campaign against Croatian pair of Marin Draganja and Nikola Mektic.

Paes and Polish team-mate Marcin Matkowski are up against Taipei’s Yen-Hsun Lu and Serbia’s Janko Tipsarevic.

Paes and Bopanna are the only Indians competing in the men’s events at the grass court Grand Slam as Ramkumar Ramanathan and Saketh Myneni had lost in the singles qualifiers while the pair of Purav Raja and Divij Sharan had lost in the doubles qualifying event.

In the women’s doubles, top seeds Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis have German team of Anna-Lena Friedsam and Laura Siegmund as their first round opponents.