Rohan Bopanna records 500th career win at Australian Open: A look back at 5 memorable performances
Seeded second in the men's doubles draw alongside Ebden, the Indian recorded his 500th tour-level career win in doubles after a first-round win in Melbourne
On a tumultuous Thursday at Melbourne Park, both for the generic tennis fans and those avidly keeping track of the proceedings for the Indian contingent at the 2024 Australian Open, Rohan Bopanna, the grand old man of Indian tennis, hit a milestone figure. Seeded second in the men's doubles draw alongside Australia's Matthew Ebden, the Indian recorded his 500th tour-level career win in doubles after a 7-6(5), 4-6, 7-6(10-2) victory against James Duckworth and Marc Polmans to move to the second round. Bopanna and Edben, who finished 2023 with a semifinal run at the Tour Finals and then carried the sublime form into 2024 to lift the title in Adelaide, emerged victoriously in the tensed tie-break in their opening-round match in Melbourne, before wrapping up a two-hour, nine-minute win, where they fired 39 winners and eight aces.
With 24-time tour-level titlist Bopanna continuing his hunt for a maiden men's doubles Slam, while improving his Australian Open record, where he has never made the second week, we look back at the five memorable performances of his career.
Winning Paris Masters with Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi
2007 was a breakthrough year for Bopanna, where he won 5 Challenger titles and reached six other finals, including at ATP level. Four of those titles came consecutively for the Indian alongside Qureshi, who were known as the Indo-Pak Express. The pair later won three other ATP titles between 2010 and 2011 - South Africa Tennis Open, Halle Open, and Stockholm Open - but their biggest win came in Paris, Bopanna's first-ever Masters 1000 win. The seventh-seeded pair had defeated Julien Benneteau and Nicolas Mahut in straight sets.
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Winning Paris Masters with Mahesh Bhupathi
In 2012, for the second time on the ATP tour, Bopanna paired up with Bhupathi, the previous being in 2010, when the pair had made the Chennai Open quarters. After a third-round exit at the Australian Open, the pair won their first title together in Dubai before making the final in Cincinnati. But it was once again in the city of Paris, where Bopanna claimed another big win. Against his former partner Qureshi, who paired up with France's Jean-Julien Rojer, the fifth-seeded Indian duo recorded a straight-set win.
Winning Madrid Masters with Florin Mergea
In 2013, alongside Bhupathi, Bopanna had come the closest to claiming a big title on clay, but were eventually undone by the Bryan brothers in the Rome final. Two years later, the Indian created another big opportunity for himself when he made the final in Madrid alongside Romania's Mergea. En route, they took down title favourites Marc Lopez and Marcel Granollers in the semis before beating No. 5 seed Nenad Zimonjić and Marcin Matkowski 6-2, 6-7 (5), [11-7] in the final.
Winning Monte-Carlos Masters with Pablo Cuevas
Two years later, Bopanna picked up his fourth Masters title with Argentina's Cuevas at the Monte-Carlo Masters, where they beat the Spanish duo of Feliciano López and Marc López in the final. The big win came just a month before he claimed his maiden Grand Slam title alongside Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski in the French Open mixed doubles. He had become the fourth Indian player to win a Grand Slam title.
Becoming the oldest Masters champion
Even at 43, Bopanna looks equally threatening and fresh with energy, raring to win big titles. In his new pairing with Ebden, with whom he won a title in Qatar in early 2023, Bopanna won his maiden trophy in Indian Wells a few weeks later, where the duo beat defending champions Jack Sock and John Isner of the USA in the semis and then world No. 1 pair Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski in the summit clash in a third set super tiebreak to become the oldest-ever ATP Masters champion.
