The 43-year-old Bopanna saw his serve broken as early as in the second game of the first set as Koolhof-Mektic took the early initiative and seized the advantage. The Indo-Australian pair, however, struck back in the seventh game and broke Mektic to nullify the advantage.

The set eventually went to the tie-breaker and Bopanna-Ebden’s experience carried them through to a 10-8 win.

A similar pattern played out in the second set as well. Koolhof-Mektic earned the first break point, again breaking Bopanna in the fifth game. Bopanna and Ebden responded and broke Mektic in the eighth as the scores remained level at 6-6.

Another tie-break finish to the set but the end result was the same as Bopanna-Ebden edged it out 7-4 to conclude the match in one hour and 43 minutes.

Rohan Bopanna and Matthew Ebden, who beat two Australian wild card teams in their opening two rounds, will be up against the sixth-seeded Argentine pair of Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni in their final-eight clash.

Gonzalez and Molteni ousted USA’s Nathaniel Lammons and Jackson Withrow, the 12th seeds, in a hard-fought three-setter to make the quarters of the Australian Open.