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Career highest ranking for Leander

Leander Paes is now number 73 in the world -- his highest ever ranking. His previous best was 98, in September last year.

The skyrocketing rise -- he was number 100 at this time last week -- owed to the 71 points Paes earned in the New Haven ATP Tournament, where he defeated three higher ranked players including the then world number two, Pete Sampras before going down to Goran Ivanisevic in the quarterfinals.

Mahesh Bhupathi didn't do remotely as well, but still moved ahead to number 352. Mahesh got 4 points at New Haven, as it's a championship series event where you can keep the points from even a round of win in the qualifiers.

The latest ATP rankings show no change in the doubles team rankings, with the Paes/Bhupathi duo steady at number three. Also unchanged, this week, is their individual doubles rankings of 7 (Bhupathi) and 8 (Paes) respectively.

These rankings will be used for seeding at the US Open, and this means that Leander/Mahesh are pretty sure of being one of the top 4 seeds for the year's final Grand Slam.

The sum ranks for the possible top 5 teams are as follows - Eltingh/Haarhuis - 1+2=3, Woodies - 4+5=9, Bjorkman/Rafter - 3+12=15, Paes/Bhupathi - 7+8=15, Ferreira/Leach - 6+9=15.

Thus, based on number of tournaments played, Leander and Mahesh will be the 4th seed over Ferreira/Leach who should be the 5th seed.

Nirupama Vaidyanathan meanwhile is down a few spots, to 166 this week from 158, as she lost some points from the Bronx challenger last year.

All the other Indian rankings remain basically the same. Gaurav Natekar has lost a few points and that places Harsh Mankad with 5 points as the Indian number 5 behind Leander, Mahesh, P. Srinath and Fazaluddin.

Vijay Kannan, Manoj Mahadevan, Sanzaruz Zaman and Uzma Khan are all in the direct entry at the US Open juniors, with Manoj and Vijay forming a doubles team.

It's is not clear whether all four are in the singles draw, or if some are only in the doubles event.

The latest ITF rankings had Vijay and Uzma at around 60, but Zaman and Manoj are near 100. Thus, the first two would almost certainly make the singles draw.

The US Open qualifiers start from today, and Nirupama will be playing.

The result of the final in the doubles at New Haven should provide some consolation to Leander/Mahesh for their second round loss to Wayne Arthurs and Peter Tramacchi, because that pair then went on to defeat Delaitre/Tarango, Kafelnikov/Vacek in the semifinals, and then Lareau/O'Brien in the finals to take the title. And in between, the Woodies also lost to the Lareau/O'Brien combine.

Is similar, yet different, to last year when Bhupathi and Paes, then not ranked as high, beat the no. 2 pairing of Eltingh/Haarhuis, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 in an early round, and then went on to win the title -- beating none other than Lareau/O'Brien in the finals!