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Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan and his Indian partner Rohan Bopanna continued their impressive run at the Monte Carlo Masters with a straight-sets drubbing of second seeds Daniel Nestor and Max Mirny on Friday.
In their second consecutive match of the tournament, Qureshi and Bopanna scored a 6-1, 7-5 win over the grand-slam winning pair of Nestor and Mirny.
In the first set, the IndoPak Express breezed through to a formidable lead after breaking their opponents’ serve twice. At 2-1, it was Nestor who gave them the first break of serve and the South Asians held their own to make it 4-1. When it was Mirny’s turn to serve, Qureshi and Bopanna broke again to serve for the set in the next game and Qureshi duly obliged by closing the set 6-1 in 21 minutes.
Former world number one pair, Nestor and Mirny, came back into the match in the second set despite having been broken to go 1-2 down. Qureshi-Bopanna were broken next to make the score level and the set swayed between the two pairs, with serves being broken at regular intervals.
The IndoPak Express were soon serving for the match at 5-4 but the Canadian-Belarusian pair fought their way back to gain a break of serve only to get their own serve broken and concede a 5-6 lead. When Qureshi and Bopanna were serving for the match at 6-5, they faltered to go 30-0 down, but regained their composure and closed out the set and the match at 7-5.
While they are eighth in the ATP doubles rankings, Qureshi and Bopanna are playing their first clay-court Masters series and will hope to hone their skills on the surface before next month’s French Open.
They face the South American pair of Juan Ignacio Chela (Argentina) and Bruno Soares (Brazil) in the semi-final.
