Bhupathi/Bopanna upset Mirnyi/Nestor to advance to the last four – Internazionali BNL d’Italia 2012
Indian pairing of Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna made a stunning effort to topple world number one team of Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor in straight sets 6-4, 7-5 in the quarter-final at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in Rome,
Italy on Friday.
With this win, Bhupathi and Bopanna also took their revenge, as they were beaten by Mirnyi and Nestor in straight sets 2-6, 4-6 in the Sony Ericsson Open semi-finals.
Bhupathi and Bopanna, who came together at the start of this season in order to prepare for the London Olympics, have given impressive results so far. The Indian combination downed Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski to capture
the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships earlier this year.
The match saw a stable start from both teams, as they did not allow the other to break serve in the first six games of the opener, evening out the score at 3-3. Bhupathi and Bopanna hit the Belarusian-Canadian duo in the seventh
and held their subsequent serve to grab a 5-3 lead. The Indian tandem served out the set in the 10th game without losing even a single point, sealing it 6-4.
Bhupathi and Bopanna smashed a couple of aces and committed one double fault. The sixth ranked team had a poor first serve percentage of merely 48 but amazingly managed to win all the 12 points on them. On the other hand, Mirnyi
and Nestor had an even lower first delivery percentage of 41, claiming seven of the nine points on them in the opener.
Just like the first set, Bhupathi/Bopanna and Mirnyi/Nestor made a steady start in the second, holding their serve in the first 10 games to take the score to 5-5. The Indian pair raised the level of their play at that moment, as
they just dropped four points in the following two and won it 7-5.
Bhupathi and Bopanna bombarded the Belarusian-Canadian duo with four aces and 71 percent of the first serves in the second set. They succeeded in converting 17 of the 22 first and seven of the nine second deliveries into points.
The Indian pair did not provide Mirnyi and Nestor any chance to break and availed the only one of their own.
Seeded seventh in the draw, Bhupathi and Bopanna will now face Marcel Granollers and Marc Lopez of Spain in the semi-finals. The Spaniards also surprised third seeds, Michael Llodra and Nenad Zimonjic, in the quarter-final.
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