Montreal:Third seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have advanced to the second round of the Rogers Cup, an ATP Masters event, after getting a bye in the opening round, here.
Also moving to the next round was the Indo-Pak pair of Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-haq Qureshi, seeded fifth, as all the eight seeded pairs got byes in their first rounds.
Bopanna and Qureshi may run into top seeded Americans Mike and Bob Bryan in the quarter-finals if both the pairs win their respective second round matches.
There is a possibility that Bopanna-Qureshi can find Paes and Bhuapthi as their semifinal opponents if both the teams go on to win all the matches till that stage.
No Indian is competing in the singles event.
Meanwhile, Sania Mirza’s poor run in women’s singles event continued as she failed to qualify for the WTA Rogers Cup after losing in a marathon three-setter to Germany’s Kathrin Woerle in the qualifiers, here.
The 11th seed Indian squandered a set lead to eventually go down 7-6 (5) 5-7 3-6 in the second and final round of the qualifying event, which lasted for two hours and 40 minutes.
Before this tournament, Sania had lost in the first rounds of Citi Open and Mercury Insurance Open after returning from a three-week break.
She though did well in the doubles event by winning the title at the Citi Open with new partner Yaroslav Shvedova of Kazakhstan.
Sania now has two more tournaments to prepare for the US Open, the last Grand Slam tournament of the season. (PTI)
