India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden entered the final of the US Open with a straight-set win over French pair of Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut here on Thursday. The sixth seeded Indo-Australian pair, who had reached the semifinals of the Wimbledon Championships this year, beat the French combination 7-6 (7-3), 6-2 in the semifinals of the hard court major.
This will be Bopanna’s second appearance in a Grand Slam men’s doubles final, making the 43-year-old Indian the oldest men’s player to reach a Grand slam final in the Open era. Bopanna beat the record of Daniel Nestor of Canada, who was 43 years and 4 months when he played in a Major final, by two months.
En-route they beat the USA doubles pair of Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow 7-6, 6-1 in the quarterfinals, Great Britain’s Julian Cash and Henry Patten 6-4, 6-7, 7-6 in the round of 16, Kazakhstan’s Roman Safiullin and Andrey Golubev 6-3, 6-3 in the second round and Australia’s Aleksander Vukic and Christopher O’Connell 6-4,6-2 in the opening round.
Interestingly, it was also in the US Open where Bopanna competed in his maiden Major final, back in 2010 along with partner Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan.
In the final, Bopanna and Ebden will play the winner of the other semifinal between the American pair of Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury and the Croatian-American duo of Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek at the Louis Armstrong stadium.
Bopanna is already out of the mixed doubles event after a second round defeat with Indonesian partner Aldila Sutjiadi.