Rohan Bopanna has moved one step closer to returning to the men’s doubles final at the US Open after 13 years.
Bopanna, whose only Grand Slam final appearance in men’s doubles category came in New York in 2010 along with Pakistan’s Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, won his quarterfinal clash in straight sets with his Australian partner Matthew Ebden on Tuesday.
The sixth-seeded Indo-Australian pair, who also reached semifinals at Wimbledon this year, defeated the 15th-seeded local duo of Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow 7-6(10), 6-1 in the quarterfinal clash that lasted an hour and 28 minutes. Lammons and Withrow had knocked out Wesley Koohlof of the Netherlands and Neal Skupski of Great Britain, reigning Wimbledon champions and top seeds, in the previous round.
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Bopanna, 43, and Ebden, 35, saved seven set points in the opener before cruising through the second to set up a semifinal clash with the French pair of Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert.
The sixth-seeds began their campaign at Flushing Meadows with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Australia’s Christopher O’Connell and Aleksandar Vukic. In the second round, they defeated the Kazakh-Russian pair of Andrey Golubev and Roman Safiullin 6-3, 6-3. Bopanna and Ebden faced their toughest test in the round of 16 in which they beat the all-British duo of Julian Cash and Henry Patten 6-4, 6-7(5), 7-6(6).
The Indo-Australian pair has won titles in Doha and Indian Wells this season while also reaching the finals in Rotterdam and Madrid. It is third in the race for the ATP Finals, a tournament to be held in Turin from November 12 to 19 where the top eight pairs of the year will compete.
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