 "Rohan Bopanna")
At ages 43 and 35, Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden high-fived each other as they made it to the quarter-final of the Wimbledon Men’s Doubles event. They beat the duo of Dutchman David Pel and USA’s Reese Stalder 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (10-5).
It was a brilliant effort by the Indian and Aussie duo as they saved five match points in the third set while serving 5-6 down. There were unforced errors from the Indian but Eden, who won Wimbledon last year with fellow countryman Max Purcell, kept the service game up, eventually winning it and forcing the match into a 10-point tie-breaker.
In the tie-breaker too, the Indo-Aussie pair struggled early on and it took them four games to get a grasp of what was going on. But after trailing 1-3, they came back to lead 8-3 and eventually won the tie-breaker 10-5 to march into their first-ever grand-slam quarter-final as a pair.
Individually, both Bopanna and Ebden have reached many quarterfinals of many Grand Slams, but this is their first together. They bowed out in the first rounds of the Australian Open and French Open earlier this year. While Bopanna is a Grand Slam winner in Mixed Doubles (2017 French Open with Sania Mirza), Ebden has achieved the feat in both Mixed and Men’s Doubles events at Australian Open (2013) and Wimbledon (2022) respectively.
In their run-up to the semi-final, Bopanna and Ebden beat the Argentine pairing of Guillermo Duran and Tomas Etcheverry in a three-set tie-breaker in the first round. In the second round, they got past the British pairing of Jacob Fernely and Johannus Monday in straight sets.
What happened in other matches on Day 9 of Wimbledon?
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In big matches of the tournament, Jannik Sinner of Italy defeated Russian Roman Safiullin in four sets to reach his first-ever Grand Slam semi-final. The Italian won the Men’s Singles quarter-final match 6-4. 3-6, 6-2, 6-2. Sinner would now face the winner of the quarterfinal match between number two seed Novak Djokovic and number seven seed Andrey Rublev, which the former led 4-6, 6-1, 5-4 at the time of publishing this copy.
In Women’s Singles quarter-final, Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic beat Jessica Pegula of the United States in three sets, winning the match 6-4, 2-6, 6-4. Vondrousova will face Elina Svitolina of Ukraine who beat number one seed and world number one Iga Swiatek in three sets to cause the biggest upset in the tournament so far.
