Paes, Bopanna advance in Australian Open mixed doubles

INDIAN TENNIS VETERANS Leander Paes and Rohan Bopanna won their respective mixed doubles openers to advance to the second round of the Australian Open at Melbourne Park in Melbourne on Sunday.

Defending champions Paes and Swiss Martina Hingis beat Russian-British pairing of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Dominic Inglot 6-3, 7-5 in one hour and nine minutes at the Margaret Court Arena. The Indo-Swiss combine will next take on American-Dutch combine of Sloane Stephens and Jean-Julien Rojer in the second round.

Indo-Chinese Taipei third seeds Bopanna and Yung-Jan Chan ousted local pair of Kimberly Birrell and John Millman 7-5, 6-1 in 48 minutes on Show Court 3.

However, it was the end of the road for Bopanna in men's doubles as he and his fourth-seeded Romanian partner Florin Mergea lost 4-6, 3-6 in an hour and 11 minutes to Filipino-Belarusian pair of Treat Huey and Max Mirnyi in the third round on Show Court 2.

In junior action, India's Mihika Yadav lost both her girls singles and doubles matches.

Mihika first went down to Canadian 15th seed Katherine Sebov 0-6, 2-6 in the opener on Court 10 before losing the doubles match 3-6, 0-6 with Chinese partner Zhuoma Ni Ma on Court 7 to Russian-Slovakian second seeds Anna Kalinskaya and Tereza Mihalikova.