Paes, Bopanna advance at French Open

Indian stars Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna notched up contrasting wins in their respective matches to enter the second round of the men's doubles competition at the French Open tennis tournament here on Wednesday.

Paes and his American partner Scott Lipsky were made to sweat hard before earning a 7-6, 4-6, 6-2 win over R. Albot of Romania and H. Chung of South Korea in their opening round encounter.

Earlier in the day, Bopanna and his Uruguayan partner Pablo Cuevas registered a straight sets win to enter the second round.

The ninth seeded Indo-Uruguayan combination needed just 53 minutes to thrash the French pair of Mathias Bourgue and Paul-Henri Mathieu 6-1, 6-1 in the first round.

It was a disappointing day for Sania Mirza however, as the Hyderabad girl and her partner Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan crashed out in the first round of the women's doubles event.

The fourth seeds went down 6-7(5), 6-1, 2-6 to Daria Gavrilova of Australia and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia.

Sania will next be seen in the mixed doubles event alongside Ivan Dodig of Croatia. The second seeded pair had finished runners-up last year.

--IANS

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