Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden lost to USA’s Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury of Great Britain in the US Open 2023 men’s doubles title clash in New York on Friday.
Competing on the hard courts of the Arthur Ashe Stadium, Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Edben, seeded sixth, lost to third seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury 6-2, 3-6, 4-6 in exactly two hours.
With this victory, Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury became the first men’s doubles team at the US Open to achieve a three-peat in more than 90 years.
This was Rohan Bopanna’s second Grand Slam men’s doubles final. The Indian tennis player had reached the men’s doubles final of the US Open with Pakistan’s Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi 13 years ago but the duo lost to the legendary Bryan brothers of the USA.
A 2017 French Open mixed doubles champion, Bopanna is yet to win a men’s doubles Grand Slam. He made it to the mixed doubles final at the Australian Open earlier this year alongside Sania Mirza.
Earlier on Thursday, Rohan Bopanna, at 43 years and six months, became the oldest player to reach a Grand Slam final in the Open era. He beat the previous record of Canada’s Daniel Nestor, who was 43 years and 4 months old when he played in the 2016 Australian Open final.
Bopanna and Ebden just dropped one set from five matches en route to the final. In the semi-finals, they got the better of five-time Grand Slam champions Nicolas Mahut and Pierre-Hugues Herbert of France in straight sets.
Earlier this year, Rohan Bopanna became the oldest tennis player to win the Masters 1000 title at the Indian Wells tournament. Bopanna and Ebden also won the Qatar Open in February and made the Wimbledon semi-finals in July.
