Bopanna-Mergea enter Stuttgart Open semis

Indo-Romanian tennis pair of Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea won in straight sets to enter the men's doubles semifinals at the Stuttgart Open here on Thursday.

The fourth seeds beat Croat-New Zealand pair of Mate Pavic and Michael Venus 7-6(5), 6-2 on the grass courts of the Tennis Club Weissenhof. They will next take on the winner of the match between German-Austrian combine of Dustin Brown and Andreas Haider-Maurer and Polish-Serbian second seeds Marcin Matkowski and Nenad Zimonjic.

Both the pars broke each other once each in the first set which forced the tie-breaker. The fourth seeds proved a tad bit better to come out on top and seal the tie-breaker 7-5.

However, the second set totally belonged to Bopanna and Mergea who broke their unseeded opponents twice without dropping serve to easily win the set and seal the match in their favour.

Good service helped Bopanna and Mergea as they served nine aces at crucial junctures to earn games. Also, they won 66 of the 119 points played in the match.