Sania Mirza and Cara Black started their 2014 French Open campaign in style, and advanced to the second round with a straight-set victory, while 'Indo-Pak Express' Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi derailed in the second round at the Roland Garros.
Indo-Zimbabwean pair of Mirza and Black started their campaign with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over the Slovakian-Israeli pair of Daniela Hantuchova and Shahar Peer, to advance to the second round of the women's doubles event.
After a delayed start, Mirza and Black wasted no time and broke their opponent's serve in the second game, to take a 2-0 lead in the first set. The Slovakian-Israeli pair tried to rally back by breaking back in the next game but the fifth seed pair won the next two games to build a solid 4-1 lead.
The Indo-Zimbabwean duo broke its opponents' serve for the third time in the set and took a 5-1 lead but could not close the set on serve. Hantuchova-Peer closed the gap to 5-3 but Mirza and Black quickly gathered their wits to take the set 6-3 in 30 minutes.
Mirza-Black broke Hantuchova-Peer in the first game and built a 2-0 lead by holding their serve in the second set. The fifth seed pair was in complete control as they broke the serve for the second time in the match but the Slovakian-Israeli duo tried to make a comeback by winning the next two games.
But the fifth seed pair ended any hopes of a comeback by winning next two games. It was just a matter of time for Mirza and Black to clinch the match, and they did it in style by breaking their opponents' serve in the ninth game.
Mirza and Black will now face either the Croatian-Chinese pair of Ajla Tomlianovic and Shuai Zhang or the Canadian-Polish duo of Gabriela Dabrowski and Alicja Rosolska in the second round.
Meanwhile, in another match, Bopanna and Qureshi faced a 6-3, 6-4 defeat at the hands of Jonathan Elrich and Marcelo Melo in the second round, in just 65 minutes. The Indo-Pak duo started the match pretty well but Elrich and Melo converted their solitary break point to clinch the first set.
The Indo-Pak pair played better tennis in the second set, with very little to separate the two teams till the sixth game. But the Israeli-Brazilian pair broke Bopanna and Qureshi in the seventh, to take a 4-3 lead and held the service to make it 5-3.
There were no further dramas as the unseeded duo held their serve in the 10th game to wrap up the encounter.
