Monte Carlo: India's Rohan Bopanna and his Australian partner Matthew Ebden lost their round of 16 men's doubles match to Mate Pavic of Croatia and Marcelo Arvalo of El Salvador at the Monte Carlo Masters here on Wednesday. They lost 3-6 6-7 (6-8).
Bopanna and Ebden fell behind quickly in the first set and could not recover from there. The Indo-Australian combo seemed to make a comeback of sorts in the second set but their opponents played very well to seal the issue in the tie-breaker.
Indian tennis ace Sumit Nagal was trailing in his second round men's singles match against Holger Rune of Denmark, when rain led to a suspension of the contest. The unseeded Nagal lost the first set 3-6 and was behind 1-2 against seventh seed Rune, when the heavens opened up. Holger was dominating the match until the rain interruption.
The 36-year-old Nagal entered the match having enjoyed an excellent run of form. At the Roquebrune-Cap-Martin clay court, he first humbled the eight seeded Flavio Cobolli in the qualifier, and then third seeded Facundo Diaz Acosto to sail into the main draw of the prestigious tournament. India's flagbearer in singles tennis, then, stunned Italian Matteo Arnaldi in the first round with a 5-7, 6-2, 6-4 victory.
On Monday, Nagal became the first Indian to win a main draw match at the Monte Carlo Masters after he defeated World No.38 Arnaldi of Italy in the opening round. Nagal also became the first from the country to win a main draw match at one of the three Masters 1000 events the series that started in 1990 held on clay.
Having recently achieved a career-high ranking of No. 93 in the ATP rankings, Nagal has become only the third Indian to participate in the main draw at Monaco, joining the legendary Vijay Amritraj (in 1977) and Ramesh Krishnan (in 1982).
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