London: India’s Rohan Bopanna has seen the gap in men’s doubles narrowed down, and getting even closer with time.
Coming in as the eighth and final pair for the season-ending Barclays ATP World Tour doubles competition, Bopanna and his Romanian partner Florin Mergea were the first through to the semi-finals scheduled for Saturday. And to think that the Indo-Romanian duo had barely made it through to London merely because Marcelo Melo and Ivan Dodig had won the Paris Masters a week earlier.
Throwing the form book out, Bopanna and Mergea started off with a stunning straight sets win against the top-seeded Bryan brothers Bob and Mike and then dumped home favourites and No. 4 seeds Jamie Murray and John Peers to ease into the semi-finals with one match still in hand.
They lost against the Italian pair of Fabio Fognini and Simone Bolelli on Thursday afternoon, but that result affected none — Bopanna and Mergea finished at the top of group Ashe/Smith, while the fifth-seeded pair from Italy went home early.
“Till perhaps last year there was only one top doubles team of the Bryan brothers. But this year things have got much closer. Just look at the doubles scenario and you will see that at least four teams are in the running to finish as the world’s top pair at the end of the year,” Bopanna told Gulf News.
“The best example of the change is that four different pairs have won each of the Grand Slams. Initially, we were not used to this. There was one dominant pairing and the rest were just trying to play catch-up. This is no longer the case now. There are several players out there who want to do well in the doubles as well,” he added.
This is the first year in a long time that the Bryan brothers have finished without a single Grand Slam crown in the doubles. This weekend the Americans are eyeing a record eleventh time in the last 13 years to finish as the year-end No. 1 pair in the world.
The scenario at the moment is that there are four teams who can finish the season atop the rankings. Going into Thursday’s last round-robin match, the Bryans were separated by a mere 45 points from Tecau and Rojer, while Dodig/Melo and Murray/Peers are also in the running.
“There is so much more happening in doubles at the moment. The crowds are coming out and supporting doubles and that’s a wonderful thing for our sport. Players are paying so much attention to competing well as a team, and that is making so much of a difference,” Bopanna noted.
“For us the most important thing here was to reach the semi-finals, and we achieved that. Now the focus is to go as much as possible and then have a strong start to the new season,” he added.
