Coco Gauff reaches French Open semi-finals in doubles; Paolini, Bopanna-Ebden duo advance
Paris: Coco Gauff reached the French Open semi-finals in doubles on Wednesday, a day after getting that far in singles.
Gauff, the reigning U.S. Open champion in singles, and Katerina Siniakova won their doubles quarter-final 6-0, 6-2 against Miyu Kato and Nadiia Kichenok.
Gauff and Siniakova have yet to drop a set in the tournament and will face Americans Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk on Friday.
Jasmine Paolini reached the first Grand Slam semi-final of her career by beating No. 4 seed Elena Rybakina 6-2, 4-6, 6-4 at the French Open on Wednesday. The 12th-seeded Paolini, a 28-year-old from Italy, exited in the first or second round in each of the first 16 Grand Slam appearances in her career, until making it to the fourth round of the Australian Open in January.
Now she’s gone two steps further by eliminating the 2022 Wimbledon champion.
Meanwhile, the second seeded Indo-Australian duo of Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden sailed into the semi-finals of the French Open with a comfortable victory over Belgium’s Sander Gille and Joran Vliegen in the men’s doubles quarter-finals. The pair won 7-6 (3) 5-7 6-1 at Court Suzanne Lenglen.
Bopanna and Ebden took one hour and four minutes to complete their win over the Belgium duo, seeded 10th in the year’s second Grand Slam.
In an exciting contest, Bopanna and Ebden prevailed to take the first set but the Belgians came back strongly to win the second set. However, the third set was a cruise for Bopanna and Ebden as they broke early to quickly establish their dominance and never gave their opponents an inch. It hasn’t been a easy road to the quarterfinals for the duo of Bopanna and Ebden as they played three-setters in their first and third round matches too. In the third round of their pre-quarterfinals, Bopanna and Ebden needed a super tie-break to emerge winners after being pushed to the brink of elimination by the unseeded team of N Sriram Balaji and MA Reyes-Varela Martinez.
