Wimbledon: Bopanna-Mergea cruise into second round of men's doubles

The Indian-Romanian tennis pair of Rohan Bopanna and Florin Mergea earned a straight sets victory in the men’s doubles first round to enter the second round of the Wimbledon Championship on the grass courts on Monday. Ninth seeds Bopanna-Mergea outclassed American-Czech pair of Tim Smyczek and Jiri Vesely 6-3, 7-6 (1), 6-1 in one hour and 26 minutes. [caption id=“attachment_2306092” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File picture of Rohan Bopanna. AFP[/caption] Bopanna-Mergea started their campaign on a positive note, winning 16 out of 20 first serve points. Also three aces from them hurt the opponents and enabled them to take home the first set 6-3 easily. Smyczek-Vesely came back strongly into the second set, but the second seeds were good enough force the set to the tie-break. Bopanna-Mergea played brilliantly to win the tie-break 7-1 and go two sets up. The third set saw an ever better performance from Bopanna-Mergea. Winning 12 out of 13 first serve points and two break points made life difficult for the American-Czech pair to return to the match. Finally, two aces sealed the match for Indian-Romanian pair and booked a place in the second round. Bopanna-Mergea will next face the winner of the match between Radek Stepanek-Mikhail Youzhny and Thomaz Bellucci-Guillermo Duran. IANS