Paris, May 31: India’s Rohan Bopanna reached his first Grand Slam semifinal in seven years after he and his Dutch partner Matwe Middelkoop rallied to beat Lloyd Glasspool and Henri Heliovaara in the men’s doubles quarterfinals of the French Open, here.
The Indo-Dutch pair eked out a 4-6 6-4 7-6 (3) win over the British-Finnish combination in a hard-fought contest on Monday night.
Bopanna last reached the semifinals of a tennis Major at the 2015 Wimbledon Championships when he had teamed up with Romania’s Florin Mergea and lost in a gruelling five-setter to Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau.
Bopanna, 42, and Middelkoop, 38, will face 12th seeds Marcelo Arevalo and Jean-Julien Roger on Thursday in the last four.
The Bopanna and Middelkoop squandered the opening set but dished out a superb fightback to win the next two as emerge victories.
In the decider, the Indo-Dutch pair showed tremendous mental fortitude to fightback from 3-5 down to take the match to a super tiebreak. They were again 0-3 behind but won 10 straight points to come up trumps.
Bopanna and Middelkoop had saved five match points to knock out Mate Pavic and Nikola Mektic, the reigning Wimbledon champions, from the Roland Garros, on Saturday.
World No. 2 Daniil Medvedev and No. 4 Stefanos Tsitsipas bit the dust at the Roland Garros clay courts, losing to Marin Cilic and Holger Rune respectively in the pre-quarterfinals of the second Grand Slam of the season here.
A red-hot Marin Cilic of Croatia powered into the French Open quarterfinal with a 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 victory over Medvedev on Court Phillippe Chatrier, leaving the Russian’s hopes of becoming world No. 1 at the end of the clay-court major in tatters.
Cilic will face another Russian, Andrey Rublev, for a place in the semifinal.
The 33-year-old is through to his third Roland Garros quarterfinal (2017-18) and his first Grand Slam quarterfinal since he reached that stage in three of the four majors in 2018, including the Australian Open final.
Cilic next faces seventh seed Rublev, who moved past Jannik Sinner of Italy earlier on Monday when the Italian retired in the third set of their match. Cilic will be seeking his first Roland Garros semifinal.
Also, World No.1 women’s tennis player Iga Swaitek was stretched all the way by Chinese teenager Zheng Qinwen in the fourth round, before the Pole rallied for a three-set win to set up a quarterfinal clash with American Jessica Pegula.
The former winner at Roland Garros dropped her first set in more than a month against Zheng, but rallied for a 6-7(5), 6-0, 6-2 win inside Court Philippe-Chatrier to extend her unbeaten run to 32 consecutive matches.
Pegula rallied for a three-set win over Romania’s Irina-Camelia Begu, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, to reach the last eight in Paris for the first time.
On Tuesday, Martina Trevisan advanced to her first Grand Slam semifinal at the age of 28 by beating a hobbled Leylah Fernandez 6-2, 6-7 (3), 6-3 at the French Open.
Trevisan will next face Coco Gauff who defeated 2018 French Open finalist Sloane Stephens 7-5, 6-2.
The Italian had a chance to win in two sets against the 17th-seeded Canadian at Court Philippe Chatrier but Fernandez saved a match point and then won the tiebreaker.
Trevisan double-faulted twice in the tiebreaker but won the first seven points of the third set and broke twice en route to a 4-0 lead.
The 19-year-old Fernandez, who reached the U.S. Open final last September, received treatment on her right foot during the first set when she hit 15 unforced errors.
She had the foot taped during a medical timeout after the fifth game, trailing 3-2. It’s the 10th straight win for the 59th-ranked Trevisan, who reached the French Open quarterfinals two years ago.
She won her first tour title this month in Rabat, Morocco. (Agencies)
