US Open 2023: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden pair advances to the round of 16 in the men's doubles

India's Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden advanced to the round of 16 in men's doubles of the US Open 2023 tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows New York on Friday.

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In the fourth and final tennis Grand Slam of the year, sixth seeds Bopanna and Ebden took a little more than an hour to defeat the unseeded pair of Roman Safiullin of Russia and Andrey Golubev of Kazakhstan 6-3, 6-3 in the US Open 2023 second round.

Bopanna and Ebden were pushed on the back foot early in the first set. They barely held their first serve and lost in the second. However, a break in the eighth game helped them win the first set. After that, Safiullin and Golubev increased their intensity in the second set. The Russia-Kazakhstan pair hit more aces and committed fewer double faults and unforced errors than Bopanna and Ebden. But they could not drag the India-Australia pair to the break.

Bopanna and Ebden, on the other hand, used their experience to grab consecutive breaks in the seventh and ninth games to take the match in straight sets. The Indo-Australian pair will next take on the unseeded British pair of Julian Cash and Henry Patten in the US Open 2023 round of 16 on Sunday.

At the same time, Rohan Bopanna will also be in action in the mixed doubles of the hard court US Open 2023 event. The veteran Indian tennis player has teamed up with Indonesia's Aldila Sutjiadi in the event. The pair won their first match on Friday.

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Meanwhile, Rohan Bopanna, 43, is India's only surviving representative at the US Open 2023. Earlier, Saketh Myneni and Yuki Bhambri, each with a different partner, had lost in the opening round of men's doubles. None of the Indian singles players progressed beyond the qualifiers, including Ankita Raina and Sumit Nagal.