BENGALURU: India's Rohan Bopanna and Aussie Matthew Ebden were going for the No.1 ranking (team) in the final of the Paris Masters on Sunday. The Indo-Aussie pairing, who claimed a greater share of the total points played in the contest, however, came up just short on the big points.
The Indo-Aussie duo, third seeds, won 62 of the 122 points played in the final, but Santiago Gonzalez of Mexico and Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin clinched the title with a 6-2, 5-7, 10-7 win.
Bopanna and Ebden got off to the slowest of starts, falling behind 0-4 in the first set. They didn't put a foot wrong for the next 50 minutes and when the Frenchman sent down a double-fault in the 12th game, the third seeds had four set points, closing at the first time of asking. The Indo-Aussie combine, who came out victors in two meetings against Gonzalez and Roger-Vasselin this year, in Barcelona and Madrid, fell behind 0-4, 4-8 in the super tie-break, leaving themselves too much ground to cover on the homestretch.
Bopanna and Ebden had won 12 of their past 14 matches, coming into the title clash, having advanced to the final at the US Open and in Shanghai. Had Bopanna and Ebden triumphed on Sunday, the Indian-Australian team would've passed Ivan Dodig and Austin Krajicek to top the ATP rankings.
