Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden face USA’s Rajeev Ram and Great Britain’s Joe Salisbury, two-time defending champions, in the men’s doubles final of the US Open in New York on Friday.
The match is schedule to be played on the Arthur Ashe Stadium.
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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 semifinal clash in straight sets with Ebden on Thursday.
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The sixth-seeded Indo-Australian pair, who also reached semifinals at Wimbledon this year, dropped serve in the opening set and trailed 2-4 at one point before forcing its way back to take it to tiebreaker. Bopanna and Ebden edged their French opponents to seal the first set 7-6(3).
The second set was much more comfortable for Bopanna and Ebden as they broke Herbert and Mahut in the third and fifth game, respectively to race to a 5-1 lead before closing the match in an hour and 34 minutes.
At 43 years 6 months, Bopanna is the oldest player to reach a men’s doubles Grand Slam final in the Open era. The previous record was held by Canada’s Daniel Nestor who made it to the 2016 Australian Open final with Czech Republic’s Radek Stepanek at the age of 43 years 4 months.
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). In the quarterfinals, they defeated the 15th-seeded local duo of Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow 7-6(10), 6-1.
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.
Final Opponents
Bopanna and Ebden take on Ram and Salisbury in the summit clash.
Ram and Salisbury defeated Croatia’s Ivan Dodig and USA’s Austin Krajicek, reigning French Open champions, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 in their semifinal.
Bopanna, along with Dodig, had lost to the American-British pair in the round of 16 of the US Open two years ago
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