{"id":19264,"date":"2024-01-25T02:43:05","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T18:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=19264"},"modified":"2024-01-25T02:43:17","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T18:43:17","slug":"ebden-and-bopanna-win-thrilling-doubles-semifinal-at-australian-open-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2024\/01\/25\/ebden-and-bopanna-win-thrilling-doubles-semifinal-at-australian-open-2024","title":{"rendered":"Ebden and Bopanna win Thrilling Doubles Semifinal at Australian Open 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

WA’s Matt Ebden and Indian partner Rohan Bopanna will contest the men\u2019s doubles final at Australian Open 2024.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second seeds edged out Czech Tomas Machac and China\u2019s Zhang Zhizhen in today\u2019s semifinals at Rod Laver Arena, recording a hard-fought 6-3 3-6 7-6(7) victory.<\/p>\n

World No.4 Ebden and world No.3 Bopanna led 5-2 in the deciding set and had three match points in the ninth game, but the fearless Machac and Zhang refused to give in.<\/p>\n

But after two hours on court, Ebden and Bopanna managed to close out victory in a high-pressure match tiebreak.<\/p>\n

This propels them into their second consecutive Grand Slam final as a team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was super close on the scoreboard, for sure,\u201d Ebden said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of close points there, especially in the second and third sets. And I mean, what an epic third set. I\u2019ve got to hand it to my partner, we\u2019ve been fighting since round one. There\u2019s been a lot of tough moments, fighting through one by one in front of our home crowd and we couldn\u2019t be happier.\u201d<\/p>\n

It marks the sixth time in the past eight years that an Aussie player has progressed to the Australian Open men\u2019s doubles final.<\/p>\n

The 36-year-old Ebden also joins exclusive company as only the fifth Aussie to advance to multiple men\u2019s doubles finals in Melbourne Park\u2019s 36-year history.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Australian Open men\u2019s doubles<\/strong>
\nAussies to reach multiple finals
\nat Melbourne Park (since 1988)<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Player<\/em><\/td>\nYears<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Todd Woodbridge<\/td>\n1992, 1997, 1998, 2001<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Mark Woodforde<\/td>\n1992, 1997, 1998<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
John Peers<\/td>\n2017, 2019<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Max Purcell<\/td>\n2020, 2022<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Matt Ebden<\/td>\n2022, 2024<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

It is Ebden\u2019s fourth Grand Slam men\u2019s doubles final appearance in total, having previously contested championship matches at the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2022 (with Max Purcell) and last year\u2019s US Open (with Bopanna).<\/p>\n

Bopanna, who is through to his third men\u2019s doubles final at Grand Slam level, is aiming to win his first major title. If he does so, he\u2019ll become the oldest man to win a Grand Slam doubles title in history.<\/p>\n

The enduring 43-year-old\u2019s Australian Open performance means he is already guaranteed to make some history, as he will\u00a0rise to the top of the ATP Tour doubles ranking<\/a>\u00a0next week and become the oldest first-time world No.1.<\/p>\n

Ebden and Bopanna\u2019s final opponent will be decided later today. They\u2019ll either face the Italian combination of Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori or German duo Yannick Hanfmann and Dominik Koepfer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WA’s Matt Ebden and Indian partner Rohan Bopanna will contest the men\u2019s doubles final at Australian Open 2024. The second seeds edged out Czech Tomas Machac and China\u2019s Zhang Zhizhen in today\u2019s semifinals at Rod Laver Arena, recording a hard-fought 6-3 3-6 7-6(7) victory. World No.4 Ebden and world No.3 Bopanna led 5-2 in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6359,"featured_media":19265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}