Bopanna-Middelkoop enter French Open pre-quarterfinals

Paris: India's Rohan Bopanna and his Dutch partner Matwe Middelkoop marched into the pre-quarterfinals of the French Open men's doubles event with a straight set win over Andrey Golubev and Fabrice Martin here on Thursday.

Bopanna and Middelkoop won the second round with a 6-3 6-4 scoreline against their opponents in one hour and six minutes.

The Indo-Dutch combo, seeded 16th, broke the from Kazakhstan-French pair at 4-4 in the second set and then Middelkoop served out the match at love. Bopanna's best performance at the clay court major is reaching the last-eight stage in 2011, 2016, 2018 and 2021.

Later in the day, Ramkumar Ramanathan and Sania Mirza will be in action in their respective doubles events.

Meanwhile, no. 3 Paola Badosa has become the first woman seeded in the top 10 to reach the third round at Roland Garros this year.

Badosa went down a break to open the third set of her match against 68th-ranked Kaja Juvan before regrouping to grab four games in a row and was on her way to a 7-5, 3-6, 6-2 victory at Court Suzanne Lenglen that took more than two hours.

Badosa's best showing at a Grand Slam tournament was a quarterfinal appearance at the 2021 French Open.

She will face No. 29 Veronika Kudermetova next. All five of the women seeded in the top 10 and placed on the bottom half of the draw are already out of the field. Badosa is in the top half, where No. 8 Karolina Pliskova lost earlier Thursday.

No. 1 Iga Swiatek, No. 7 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 9 Danielle Collins play later.

The woman seeded 11th, American Jessica Pegula, reached the third round by beating Anhelina Kalinina 6-1, 5-7, 6-4.

This was the sort of point in the sort of contest that, if 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz eventually reaches the heights so many believe he will, the lucky folks on hand at Court Simonne Mathieu on Wednesday night just might regale dinner guests for years with tales that begin, "We were there when ..." Not, mind you, the match point Alcaraz saved in his second-round French Open marathon against Albert Ramos-Vinolas, a fellow Spaniard who is 15 years his elder.