Bopanna, Nestor in doubles final

Indo-Canadian pair back from the edge to prevail over Rojer and Tecau in last-four match

R ohan Bopanna and Daniel Nestor fought back from the brink of defeat to book their place in the doubles final with a 4-6, 7-6 (9), 1-0 (9) win over Jean-Julien Rojer of the Netherlands and Horia Tecau of Romania at the Dubai Duty Free Men’s Open yesterday.

The Indo-Canadian pair will await the winners of the second semi-final that was to be played later in the night between Dominic Inglot and Florin Mergea and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and Nenad Zimonjic.

Today’s final will be played on centre court at 5pm, followed by the singles final at 7pm. Nestor and Bopanna struggled early on against the near-perfect combining between Rojer and Tecau, who broke in the seventh game for a 4-3 lead before Rojer served out the set 6-4 in 33 minutes.

In the second set, the fourth seeds trailed Tecau and Rojer following a break in the fifth game. But Bopanna and Nestor broke back immediately and held on to push the set into the tie-break which they went on to win 11-9.

In the deciding tiebreaker, Nestor and Bopanna were once again on the back foot as they trailed 1-5 at the changeover. But they hung in and managed to draw level 8-8 and ultimately win 11-9 after Tecau committed a double fault.

“This is what we would call winning ugly. We just hung in there and won, and that is what matters. Luckily the tiebreaker went our way,” Bopanna said.

“When we were a set down, it was time for us to take one point at a time and see the game moving back and forth. And then came the double fault and it was a relief to get through that one,” Nestor added.