India’s campaign at this year’s Australian Open came to an end after Rohan Bopanna bowed out of the mixed doubles with a straight-set loss in the opening round on Saturday.
Bopanna and his Chinese partner Yingying Duan lost 4-6, 4-6 to the pair of American Bethanie Mattek-Sands and United Kingdom’s Jamie Murray in a match that lasted an hour and three minutes. It was a tough first-round match, drawn against multiple time Grand Slam champions.
Bopanna had earlier lost the men’s doubles opener with partner Ben McLachlan to the Korean wild card pair of Ji Sung Nam and Min-Kyu Song in opening round match.
Divij Sharan and Ankita Raina have also crashed out of the men’s and women’s doubles events after suffering straight-set defeats in the opening round on Thursday.
Raina, the fifth Indian woman tennis player ever to secure a place in the main draw of a Grand Slam event, and her partner Mihaela Buzarnecu of Romania lost 3-6, 0-6 at the hands of Australian wild cards Olivia Gadecki and Belinda Woolcock. Divij and his Slovakian teammate Igor Zelenay lost 1-6 4-6 to the German combination of Yannick Hanfmann Kevin Krawietz in the first round.