record night at the Masters 1000 de Indian Wells 2023 with the victory of Rohan Bopanna y Matthew Ebden in the men’s doubles modality. After making the final in Rotterdam and winning the title in Doha, it seems that this duo promises to continue to make people talk this season, although today the spotlight is on the most veteran of the couple a little stronger. The Indian tennis player, with just turned 43 years old, has become the oldest player to win a tournament of this category, putting his name in the history books. Normal that he later had a press conference as long as his legend.
very tense ending
“The key moments are those of weakness, when you are not playing well. Once you are in the final, all the players see the ball very well, so everything becomes more complicated, it depends on small details. There the margins are very narrow, so we are surpassing this type of matches based on percentages, that is how the closest matches are drawn. Today I searched too much for my serve, but I missed it by a few centimeters, that generated some pressure on me”.
the set of truth
“After losing the second set, Matt took a bathroom break, there we also had time to sit down and take a breather, think about what we needed to do. The most important thing is that we started the supertiebreak very well, that was very positive and made the difference. In this doubles format, where there are no advantages and a tie-break awaits you at the end, there are hundreds of changes of momentum, you just have to find a way to approach this correctly, bring the positive things forward whenever necessary.
Relationship with Matthew Ebden
“Sometimes it takes a bit of time to find the right partnership, until it arrives. Our last four weeks have been fantastic, especially the way we’ve turned around a lot of matches after being broken or losing the first set, we always stayed positive through it all. This is the most important key within the couple, perhaps we have been inspired a bit by Daniil (Medvedev), who has been winning everything every week. We have been playing practically the same tournaments, we try to follow in their footsteps”.
Oldest player to win a Masters 1000
“It’s always special when you get a record like this, but the biggest thing for me is to be able to keep playing tennis, keep going forward and believe that I can still win big tournaments. This has been the key, in addition to having a partner like Matt, from the beginning we set ourselves the goal of competing for the ATP 500 and Masters 1000 tournaments, we have had to work hard to reach this level. I’d say that’s one of my strengths, constantly finding ways to improve, both individually and with my partner. I have sent a message to Daniel Nestor, I am sorry for having broken his record (laughs) ”.
Proud of its origins
“It’s a very nice feeling, I’m happy to have achieved something so special. I am the only player representing India at these levels and that makes me very proud. Every time I go to a tournament and see the Indian flag is something that fills me with pride, I hope we will continue to see it on the circuit for many more years. I feel like I got a lot of messages this week for what I did, so I’m happy to show that age is just a number, that it’s still possible to do. The biggest victory for me is to inspire others, to see that I can still put a smile on someone’s face.”
