Paes suffers Rio heartbreak, targets Tokyo 2020

Leander Paes made a bitter exit from his record seventh Olympics yesterday, claiming his campaign had been sabotaged, before eyeing the 2020 Tokyo Games — when he will be 47.
 Paes and Rohan Bopanna were defeated 6-4, 7-6 (8/6) by Poland’s Lukas Kubot and Marcin Matkowski in the first round.
 The 18-time major winner lashed out at reports that he had refused to stay in the athletes’ village in Rio and did not want to share a room with Bopanna. The reports came after it was claimed Bopanna had not wanted to partner Paes, preferring instead the younger Saketh Myneni.
 “It was unfair... I was targeted. It wasn’t fair that some people said I didn’t want to stay in the village or share with Rohan,” said Paes. “It was a personal shot and it upset me. It’s not right that people write the wrong information.”
 It was a sad end for Paes, coming on the 20th anniversary of his bronze medal in singles at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
 He shrugged off the controversy surrounding his Rio selection. “It had no effect on us. We gave it everything we had and fought hard,” said Paes. “I was hoping to go deeper in the draw but we came up against a very hot Polish team.”
 Paes and Matkowski are regular partners on the ATP Tour and reached the French Open quarter-finals recently.
 Paes said he is serious about playing in Tokyo in four years’ time although the authorities in India may have reservations after a second Olympics dominated by selection rows.
 In 2012, Mahesh Bhupathi was teamed with Bopanna in the men’s doubles. As part of a compromise, Paes, who had threatened to pull out of the Games, reluctantly played with Vishnu Vardhan in the men’s doubles while being controversially teamed with Sania Mirza in the mixed. Mirza later raged that she was being used as “bait”.
 “If possible, I will be in Japan. Four years is a long time but I said that when I played my fourth Olympics,” added Paes.
 The veteran, whose Atlanta bronze was India’s first individual medal at a Games since 1952, admitted yesterday’s loss was tough to take. “But we win and lose together. To get to seven Olympics is not easy, there’s a lot of hard work week in, week out,” said Paes. “We will roll with the punches. I am grateful to Rohan for working with me and playing hard. There’s a lot going on at the moment, but we tried to stay focused on the tennis. We tried our damnedest.”
 India still have hopes of a medal in tennis at the Games. Bopanna will partner Mirza in the mixed doubles later in the week. Before that Mirza, the top-ranked women’s doubles player in the world, will team up with Prathana Thombare in women’s doubles.
 Elsewhere, Japanese fourth seed Kei Nishikori reached the Olympic tennis second round. Nishikori, a quarter-finalist at the 2012 Olympics, breezed past Spanish left-hander Albert Ramos-Vinolas 6-2, 6-4 in just 79 minutes.
 Fittingly, a Brazilian umpire Carlos Bernardes was in the chair for the first match on centre court and Nishikori rose to the occasion, taking the opening set in just 33 minutes, breaking in the third and seventh games.
 Nishikori next plays Australia’s John Millman who became the first player to clinch a ‘double bagel’ 6-0, 6-0 in Games history. The 27-year-old Millman swept past Ricardas Berankis in just 50 minutes to complete a miserable summer for the Lithuanian player.
  Tomorrow, fifth-seeded Venus Williams, the 2000 champion in Sydney, will open her campaign against Belgium’s Kirsten Flipkens. At 36, Williams is the oldest player in the women’s draw in Rio.
 Defending champions Andy Murray and Serena Williams as well as world number one Novak Djokovic and 2008 champion Rafael Nadal all start their campaigns on Tuesday.
 Djokovic, bidding to become just the third man after Andre Agassi and Nadal to complete the Golden Slam of Olympic gold and the four majors, has arguably the toughest opening encounter. The Serb faces 2009 US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro who beat him in the bronze medal match at the London Olympics in 2012.