Rohan Bopanna’s dream of becoming a men’s doubles champion at the US Open remained unfulfilled for the second time as he and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden went down to Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury 6-2, 3-6, 4-6 in a high-class final at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York on Friday. Ram and Salisbury became the first men’s doubles pair to win the US Open three times in a row. This was their fourth Grand Slam in all.
Bopanna was playing in his second US Open men’s doubles final. The last time, he and his Pakistani partner Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi lost in the final to the Bryan brothers in 2010.
This time, it looked like Bopanna’s dream would become a reality but it wasn’t to be. He and Ebden gave it their all. They started off by breaking Rajeev Ram’s first serve and put the pressure on the experienced pair right from the onset. Both Bopanna and Ebden were switched on and caught Ram and Salisbury by surprise.
Ebden, as he has done so often in this tournament, did not put a foot wrong in the first set and gave Ram and Salisbury no chance to stage a comeback. The Indo-Australian pair got two breaks up in the seventh game to make it 5-2 and then made no mistake in their hold to take a crucial one-set lead in the final.
Ram and Salisbury, however, made a strong comeback in the second set. Bopanna and Edben did not do too much wrong but Ram and Salisbury were just too good. They gave the sixth seeds a taste of their medicine by going a double break up and then holding to their own serve to take the second set and push the final into the decider.
Bopanna, who at the age of 43, became the oldest male to compete in a Grand Slam final, reserved some of his best tennis in the final set. Three break points down and with his back against the wall, Bopanna displayed some incredible tennis to hold his serve. Bopanna and Ebden came very close to getting a break in the fourth game but Ram held onto his nerve to save three break points and make it 2-2.
That was perhaps the most important hold of the match. A couple of games later, the third seed got a break and took a 4-2 lead. Once the third seeds went a break up in the decider, it was always going to be an uphill task to upstage them. Ebden and Bopanna put pressure on Ram when he was serving for the match but the Indian-origin experienced campaigner kept calm under pressure to close out the match and create history.
