leander Paes's dreams of winning a second Olympic medal went up in smoke as he and Rohan Bopanna made an inglorious exit in the opening round of the men's doubles competition, losing in straight sets to the Polish pair of Marcin Matkowski and lukasz Kubot 4-6, 6-7 (6-8) on Saturday.
Playing in his record seventh and probably his last Olympics, Paes — a bronze medallist at the 1996 Atlanta Games, saw his campaign get over in only 84 minutes as not for once did the Indian pair look like having forged a winning combination.
The controversies leading upto the first round match also did not do any good to the pair as there was a distinct lack of on-court chemistry between them.
The duo were broken thrice in the first set even after being a break up. Kubot then held his serve making it 5-4 before Bopanna failed to hold his serve, thereby conceding the first set 6-4.
In the 11th game of second set, the Indian pair broke the opponents' serve to make it 6-5 only for Bopanna to lose his serve in the very next game making it 6-6 and taking the set to the tie-breaker, where India lost the match.