India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Canadian partner Daniel Nestor made it through to the second round of the men’s doubles at the Australian Open but veteran Mahesh Bhupathi and Austrian Jurgen Melzer lost rather meekly in their opening match in Melbourne on Thursday.
Bopanna and Nestor, seeded seventh, had to work harder to edge the team of Cyprus’ Marcos Baghdatis and Australia’s Marinko Matosevic 7-6 (2), 7-5 in an hour and 36 minutes.
Both teams served poorly with numerous breakpoints on offer. The Indo-Canadian pair had nine break-point opportunities in the entire match, managing to convert just three while their opponents converted two out of six.
There was nothing to separate the two teams in the first set and it all came down to the nerves, which the seventh seeds held to edge the opening set in tie-break.
In the second set, Bopanna and Nestor were clearly the better of the two teams and needed just a single break to win the match.
Meanwhile, Bhupathi didn’t have a good outing and along with his partner Melzer lost 4-6, 3-6 to Argentine duo Diego Schwartzman and Horacio Zeballos in an hour and seven minutes.
The Indo-Austrian team failed to ever settle down and never got going. While the Argentine pair served six aces and were on the money more often than not, it was the unforced errors that caused Bhupathi and Melzer dear.
The duo made 27 unforced errors — 12 in the first set and 15 in the second — in the entire match to their opponents’ nine.
