Indo Pak Express crashes out to Almagro/Soares in 2nd round – Shanghai Rolex Masters 2011
Seventh seeds, Indian Rohan Bopanna and Pakistani Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi, exited from their opening round match after suffering a 6-7(8), 4-6 defeat at the Shanghai Rolex Masters 2011, an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event held on
the outdoor hard courts in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. They lost to the Spanish Brazilian duo of Nicolas Almagro and Bruno Soares in the second round on Wednesday.
The high flying Indo Pak Express displayed dismal performance in their opening round match at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena and after losing their serve twice, they derailed out of this event in just one hour and sixteen
minutes.
The Indian Pakistani pair made a promising entry on the Chinese hard courts and held their opening serve in the second game to level the scores at 1-1. They maintained their form to hold following serves until the pair lost concentration
and gifted away their serve in the eighth game. Despite snatching the break back in the very next game, Bopanna and Qureshi trailed in the tie-breaker and eventually registered a 6-7(8) defeat.
Bopanna and Qureshi were able to hold on to their opening serve in the first game but lost the first blood in the third game. They plucked in their remaining serves but the initial loss led them lose the set with a 4-6 score line.
Overall, they clobbered an equal first serve share of 74 percent and registered an impressive 67 percent win on it. However, the saved only one out of three breakpoints faced and converted only one out of six breakpoint opportunities
to their advantage.
The Indo Pak tandem were in great form this season as they won a title at Halle earlier this season and made semi-final berths in many tournaments. However, they failed to shine in China and regardless of receiving a first round
bye, Bopanna and Qureshi exited without even reaching the final eight.
Soares teamed up with his compatriot, Melo to upset the top seeded team of Bopanna and Qureshi in the Tokyo Open last week. This time, he joined forces with Almagro to upset the seeds again and confidently secure a quarter-final
spot in this event. They will face the winner of the match between second seeded team of Belarusian max Mirnyi and Canadian Daniel Nestor and Austrian Serbian duo of Oliver Marach and Janko Tipsarevic.
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