India’s Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden won the men’s doubles title at the Qatar Open 2023 tennis tournament in Doha on Friday.
The Indo-Australian pair defeated Constant Lestienne of France and Botic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands 6(5)-7(7), 6-4, 10-6 in the final to lift their maiden ATP Tour title as a team.
This was Rohan Bopanna’s second Qatar Open title. He had won the doubles title in 2020 with Dutch partner Wesley Koolhof and came runners-up last year with Canada’s Denis Shapovalov.
Rohan Bopanna has now won 23 doubles titles in his career. It was his first with Matthew Ebden, who is the reigning Wimbledon doubles champion. The Indian tennis player won three titles last year in Tel Aviv, Pune and Adelaide. The ATP 250 win in Qatar was Bopanna’s first title in 2023.
Bopanna and Ebden also made it to the final at the Rotterdam Open ATP 500 last week but lost to USA’s Austin Krajicek and Croatia’s Ivan Dodig in the match tiebreaker from the championship point.
In Doha on Friday, the Indian-Australian pair, seeded third, was a break up at 6-5 in the first set but were pegged back in the 12th game and lost the set in a tiebreaker.
The two teams improved their defence in the second game and held their serves till the ninth game. However, Bopanna and Ebden won the 10th game and took the match into the match tiebreak.
Bopanna, 17th in the ATP Rankings for doubles, and world No. 37 Ebden then used their experience to convert four of six break point opportunities in the match tiebreaker and closed the match in 99 minutes.
