ATP Finals: Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden start on a losing note

Hyderabad: India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Australian men’s doubles partner Matthew Ebden started their ATP Finals campaign on a horrid note after losing to Italy’s Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori in their first match of the season-ending tournament in Turin, Italy.

Rohan Bopanna and Ebden lost 2-6, 3-6 in just under an hour. The Indo-Australian pair beat Bolelli and Vavassori in the 2024 Australian Open final but lost the next three meetings on the trot.

The pair, who reached the semifinals in last year’s ATP Finals, started on a horrid note and will run into further sterner tests and they are slated to meet the top seeds later in the group stages.

Bolelli and Vavassori started on an aggressive note and earned their first break opportunity in the second game of the first set. After seizing the opportunity and the upper hand, the Italian pair were unstoppable.

A double fault by Bopanna and Ebden in the eighth game allowed the Italian pair to assert their supremacy in the first set as they clinched it in no time at 6-2.

Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden started a tad better in the second set but another double fault gave Bolelli and Vavassori another break opportunity. The Italians did not waste any time in grabbing the chance and took the upper hand again and breezed through the second set to start their ATP Finals campaign on a winning note.

The Indo-Australian pair could not remotely earn a breakpoint opportunity and could only win 58% of points (19 out of 33) on their first serve and 47% (7 out of 15) on their second serve, putting themselves under a lot of pressure.

Bopanna and Ebden will next face another stern test when they meet top seeds Marcelo Arevalo of El Salvador and Mate Pavic of Croatia in their next group game on Wednesday.