It was an outcome of many firsts at the French Open mixed doubles final today. The Indo-Canadian pair of Rohan Bopanna and Gabriela Dabrowski, while making light work of their opponents Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Robert Farah (Germany and Columbia), won their first Grand Slam titles respectively. Pairing up for the first ever time in a major, their journey to the final was not easy at all, as they were brought to the test by the likes of second seeds Sania Mirza-Ivan Dodig in the quarter-final and third seeds Andrea Hlaváčková and Édouard Roger-Vasselin in the semi-final.
For Bopanna, it was a result of years of hard work and never-give-up attitude. Seven years ago he reached the finals of the 2010 US Open along with his Pakistani doubles partner Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi where they gave the toughest challenge possible to the Bryan brothers - two consecutive tie-breaks that went down to the wire. The brothers incidentally crashed out in the fourth round itself in this year's French Open. As for Bopanna’s Columbian partner, it’s a moment of history, becoming the first Canadian woman to win a Grand Slam, bettering even the success of her more famous Canadian peers - Milas Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard.