Madrid, May 6 (IANS) Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea defeated Nicolas Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin 6-4, 4-6, 10-5 in the Round of 16 at the $4,660,678 Madrid Open tennis tournament here on Wednesday.
The Indian-Romanian pair defeated the French duo in a closely-fought affair with the victorious pair winning 65 of the 127 points played.
They took the first set 6-4 but lost the second set by an identical score.
They, however, bounced back appreciably in the deciding set tie-breaker to claim it and the match 10-5 at the clay court event.
Bopanna and Mergea had defeated Marin Draganja and Henri Kontinen 5-7, 7-6(5), 10-6 in another tight contest in the Round of 32 on Monday.
Earlier in the day, Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis entered the women’s doubles quarter-finals with a straight sets win, while compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi bit the dust with a first round loss in the men’s doubles in the tournament.
In the second round, top seeds Sania and Martina, who had got a first round bye, took just an hour to defeat Slovakian-Romanian combo of Janette Husarova and Raluca Olaru 6-2, 6-3 on the clay courts of the Caja Magica on Tuesday evening.
They will take on circuit regulars and seventh seeds Bethanie Mattek-Sands (United States) and Lucie Safarova (Czech) in the last eight.
Service games were broken quite regularly in the match.
The unseeded pair broke Sania and Martina twice during the contest but the top seeds reverted by breaking their opponents thrice more to gain the upper hand in the match.
A couple of double faults at crucial junctures also did not help Janette and Raluca.
Sania and Martina won 59 points in total to that of the Slovak-Romanian combine’s 34.
However, Bhupathi’s luck ran out quite early as he lost the opener in straight sets.
The South African-French pair of Kevin Anderson and Jeremy Chardy beat the Indian-Austrian wildcard combination of Bhupathi and Nick Kyrgios 7-5, 6-3.
Anderson and Chardy broke their opposing team once in each set to settle the matter with relative ease and advance into the second round.