Sept. 1: Defending champions and third seeds Leander Paes of India and Lukas Dlouhy of the Czech Republic crashed out of the first round while Rohan Bopanna and Pakistan’s Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi advanced to the second round of the US Open men’s doubles tennis.
Paes-Bhupathi lost 7-6(7), 3-6, 4-6 to Czech Martin Damm and Filip Polasek of Slovakia on Tuesday. Bopanna-Qureshi, seeded 16th, staved off the second set fightback from American pair Brian Battistone and Ryler DeHeart to win 6-3, 7-6(7).
In the singles, Sania Mirza saw her US Open hopes come crashing down when she lost a second-round tie 3-6, 4-6 to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia. The 23-year-old from Hyderabad, who is battling back after dropping out of the world top 100 due to a wrist injury, had raised hopes with a fine run of four wins in a row in New York coming through the qualifiers and a first-round tie against Michelle Larcher de Brito of Portugal.
But in the 20th-seeded Pavlyuchenkova, who has two title wins this year and who reached the semi-finals in Cincinnati in the build-up to New York, she came up against a big hitter.
Sania was quickly a break of serve down at 2-3 before squandering two break points in the sixth game with some wayward shot-making when it mattered most. She could not recover as the Russian pounded her into submission.