India's Rohan Bopanna and Australia's Matthew Ebden stormed into the US Open 2023 men's doubles quarter-finals after a hard-fought three-set win over British pair Julian Cash and Henry Patten at Flushing Meadows, New York on Sunday.
The sixth-seeded pair of Bopanna and Ebden registered a 6-4, 6(5)-7, 7-6(10-6) win against the British pair. The match lasted for about two hours and 22 minutes. The Indo-Australian pair, who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals this year, hit 13 aces and won 81 percent of their first-serve points. Bopanna-Ebden will next face the winner of the match between top seeds Wesley Koolhof of Netherlands and Neal Skupski of Britain and Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow of America.
Bopanna and Ebden worked well in the first set of their US Open 2023 men's doubles match. They broke Julian Cash's serve at 3-3 to take the lead. Bopanna would eventually serve out the set. In the second set, Ebden's serve was broken. This was only the first time in the US Open 2023 season that the Indo-Australian duo had dropped serve. They did eventually break back but lost in the tiebreak.
Neither team could find a decisive break in the third set, calling for a Match Tiebreak (first to 10 points with a difference of two). Ebden-Bopanna showed their experience in racing to a 4-0 lead. After that, they held on to win the tiebreak 10-6 and secure a spot in the US Open 2023 quarter-final.
Earlier this season, Bopanna and Ebden also won titles on hard courts in Doha and Indian Wells. The 43-year-old Bopanna is the only Indian left in the US Open 2023 tournament after the exit of Yuki Bhambri and Saketh Myneni in the first round of the singles category. Ankita Raina and Sumit Nagal also couldn't make it past the qualifiers.
Bopanna, however, made a second-round exit in the US Open 2023 mixed doubles with Indonesia's Aldila Sutjiadi. They lost 6-2, 7-5 to American Ben Shelton and Taylor Townsend.
