Indian tennis players’ Paris Olympics 2024 campaign started and ended on the same day. India’s Sumit Nagal and doubles team of Rohan Bopanna and N Sriram Balaji lost their first-round matches to bow out of the Paris Olympics.
Nagal lost to France’s Corentin Moutet 2-6, 6-5, 5-7 while Bopanna and Balaji lost to Moutet’s compatriots Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Gael Monfils 5-7, 2-6 in a one-sided contest.
Nagal was the first to exit but fought till the end. He had a good baseline play but Moutet was clinical in his game to get past the first hurdle.
This was Nagal’s second Olympics appearance. He lost in the second round in Tokyo as he went down to Danill Medvedev.
Nagal and Moutet played three set games in the last three of their four matches and it was only fitting that the match at the grand stage of multi-sport events went the distance.
After losing the first set, Nagal upped the ante, won the second and was neck-to-neck in the decider at 5-5, after leading 2-0.
Nagal got broken at 5-5 as Moutet took the lead and then served for the match without any fuss.
The Indian singles player had incidentally beat Moutet in their last meeting at the Grand Prix of Hassan tournament in Marrakech, Morocco, earlier this year.
In the doubles match, Bopanna was the centre of all the action as he was engaged in long rallies from the baseline, something that he wasn’t comfortable with to start with.
The French duo of Monfils and Roger-Vasselin pushed the Indian veteran to the baseline, with Balaji not able to create a huge impact at the net.
The wait for a medal in Indian tennis continues, with Leander Paes’ bronze medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics being the last.
