The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Indian challenge ends with Bopanna

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 06, 2006

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Sport - Tennis

Indian challenge ends with Bopanna

K. Keerthivasan

CHENNAI: Even an astrologer wouldn't wish to hazard a guess on this one. When will Indian tennis stop from being a good and gracious host? Every time the expectations are raised, the Indians have crumbled under them. That has been the story in these nine years of the ATP event here, Leander Paes, being an exception.

Qualifier Rohan Bopanna did arouse hopes and passions especially with the manner in which he played against the Frenchman Cyril Saulnier. To be fair, nobody expected Bopanna to script a win over Gilles Muller of Luxembourg, the fifth seed, in the second round of the Chennai Open tennis championship. Bopanna crashed out to a 6-3, 6-4 defeat in an hour and six minutes. With Bopanna's exit, ended the Indian challenge.

Ranked 76 in the world, the left-hander Muller didn't do anything special. His serves were on target most of the time, kept the ball on court forcing Bopanna to commit mistakes.

At 1-2, Bopanna started with an ace, but soon slipped into unforced errors and was down three break points. Though he saved one, a forehand-down-the line from Muller whizzed past him on the next. Muller needed that one break and he ran away with the first set.

In the second set Bopanna began to find his rhythm. He was able to hold his own in the rallies, and also came up with some fine forehand winners. But when the time arrived for him to step up the momentum, he faltered. Bopanna committed his second double fault of the match in the ninth game to lose serve. Muller finished the contest on his third matchpoint.

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