Rohan Bopanna may not have succeeded in winning his maiden US Open men’s doubles title with partner Matthew Ebden but the 43-year-old Indian, who became the oldest to compete in a Grand Slam doubles final, won the hearts of millions of tennis fans with his incredible gesture. So rare was Bopanna’s gesture that his opponent, Rajeev Ram, said he had seen it for the first time in his more than two-decade-long tennis career.
2-4 down in the decider of the final, Ebden, trying to hold his serve to stay in the match, hit a smashing forehand winner and got a much-needed point to make 15-15 in the seventh game. But Rohan Bopanna walked up to the umpire and said he wanted to conceive the point. The reason? He said the ball had brushed his right arm before landing on the other side of the court. The chair umpire, who had obviously missed the slightest of deflections, asked Bopanna for confirmation. “Are you conceding the point?”. “I said it touched my hand so obviously I am conceding the point,” came Bopanna’s reply.
The front-on replays confirmed that the ball had indeed just brushed Bopanna’s arm but so fain was the touch that it was natural that everyone apart from Bopanna himself missed it.
After the chair umpire made the announcement that Bopanna had decided to give the point, Ram and his partner Joe Salisbury were left stunned. The Indian-origin American, in fact, asked Bopanna and Edben the reason behind them conceding a point, multiple times.
After the match, in which the third seeds won 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 to become the first pair in US Open history to complete a treble, Ram lauded Bopanna’s sportsman spirit.
“What Rohan did was incredible. I’ve been playing professional tennis for 20-25 years now and I haven’t seen anything like that in my career. This speaks a lot about his character,” Ram said.
Bopanna was playing the US Open final for the second time in his career and this time as the oldest player at 43. He had finished as runner-up with his Pakistani partner Aisam-ul-haq Qureshi way back in 2010, losing the title clash to the legendary Bryan brothers.
Overall, it was the third Grand Slam final for Bopanna, who won his first and only Major in 2017 when he lifted the French Open mixed doubles trophy with Canadian partner Gabriela Dabrowski.
Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi are only two male tennis players from India to have won Grand Slam titles.
