India’s Rohan Bopanna and Divij Sharan were knocked out of the Noventi Open men’s doubles event after suffering a straight-set quarter-final loss in Halle.
The Indian pair went down 3-6, 6-7 to the sixth-seeded Belgian duo of Sander Gille and Joran Vilegen, failing to advance to the semi-finals of the event on Thursday.
Bopanna and Sharan, who are waiting to know if they will make the cut at the Tokyo Olympics as a team, had got the better of second seeds Lukasz Kubot and Edouard Roger Vasselin in the second round of the tournament that marked the beginning of the grass-court season.
While the 41-year-old Bopanna is ranked 38th, the left-handed Sharan is placed 75th for a combined rank of 113th on June 14, the cut off date for rankings to be considered for entries at the Tokyo Olympics.
The Indian pair needs a lot of withdrawals from other nations to make the cut due to its low combined ranking.
Meanwhile, India’s Ramkumar Ramanathan too lost his men’s singles round of 16 match at the Nottingham Challenger. The 26-year-old went down 4-6, 3-6 to Poland’s Kamil Majchrzak.
On Tuesday, Ramkumar had scored a good win over former top-50 player Leonardo Mayer in the first round . He came from a set down at the grass-court event to win 3-6 6-3 7-6(1), his third straight win after qualifying for the main draw.
Inputs from PTI