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Leander has tough task ahead at US Open

Leander Paes will face Alex O'Brien of USA in the first round of the US Open.

Leander is in the 3rd quarter, in the bottom half of the draw. His potential second round opponent will be fifth seed Richard Krajicek.

The other seeded players in his quarter are 13th seed Tim Henman and 4th seed Petr Korda. Other potential opponents in his quarter are Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Tommy Haas, Nicolas Kiefer, and Richard Fromberg.

The year has not been good for Alex O'Brien so far. He was ranked in the top 30 in early 1997. He had also won the New Haven title in August 1996. But went down the rankings during mid-1997.

He started this year at just inside the top-100, but has been outside that for most of the year. He has not even reached a single ATP semifinal in almost two years.

He occasionally beats top-100 players, but loses more often than not. Alex did well recently at Toronto ATP tournament, for instance, beating Kuerten and Delgado before losing to Krajicek. He then lost a close three-setter to Corretja at Cincinnati in the first round, and beat Max Mirnyi at New Haven before losing badly to Kuerten.

Leander and Alex O'Brien have never played against each other in singles. They have met many times in doubles, with Leander winning most of the time. It was Alex who called Leander's game-winning shot at the Hartford semifinals against the Lareau/O'Brien combine as the "Egyptian Magician" shot.

As for Krajicek, Leander has faced him once before, at Dubai Open in 1997, where Leander reinjured himself and lost, 7-5, 4-6, 2-6.

Leander has 71 points to defend from the two rounds he won last year at the Open. If he does not defend the points -- that is, if he does not win the first two rounds -- he could drop back to just outside 90s in rankings, which will not be helpful for him for making into the tough 56-draws for Stuttgart Open and the Paris Indoor Super 9s, for both of which the entries close soon after the US Open.

Nirupama Vaidyanathan meanwhile lost the US Open qualifier match to Ludmila Richterova, 6-1, 0-6, 2-6.

Everything went wrong in the second set when Richterova started serving very strongly, peppering her service game with aces after Nirupama won the first set. She was trying a late comeback, down a break at 2-4 with Ludmila serving, and had her at deuce. Ludmila held to go up 5-2 and then broke Niru at love to advance.

It was Nirupama's second defeat in a row to Ludmila Richterova.

Leander and Mahesh Bhupathi meanwhile are at the Huggy Bears invitational doubles which started yesterday.

This is an event sponsored from 1985 onwards by a multimillionaire, Ted Forstmann of Forstmann and Little Co., who is also the CEO of Gulfstream Air, a Fortune 500 company. Forstmann is also a very well known philanthropist, who with Sam Walton of Wal-Mart once came up with $100 million each for an innercity school program charity! He also supports the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and Andrea Jaeger's charity organisation for sick kids.

Forstmann likes Pro-am and charity events, and was a golf partner with Vijay Singh at the Pebble Beach Pro-am golf earlier this year.

The Huggy Bears event raises a lot for charity, and normally gets attendance from most top doubles players during the week before the US Open every year. It is a big backyard social event at Ted Forstmann's place at Southampton (Long Island), New York.

This year the player roster at Huggy Bears includes current pros such as Galbraith, Florent, Pimek, Talbot, Connell, E.Ferreira, Eagle, Tillstrom, Kulti, Pat Cash, Reneberg, Broad, Norval, Fromberg, Olhovskiy, Kratzmann, Leach, Grabb, Sandon Stolle, Byron Black, Wayne Black, Johnson, Montana, Suk, MacPherson, Paes, and Bhupathi.

Among the old stalwarts are Ken Rosewall, Anand Amritraj, Vijay Amritraj, John Fitzgerald, Wally Masur, Bill Scanlon, Spencer Segura, Jim Pugh, Fred Stolle etc.

The event includes 16 teams in the "Pro-Am" section, with each team comprising of one pro and one amateur, normally a millionaire. And a further 16 teams in the "Ex-Pro" section with each team with comprising one current pro and an ex-pro.

Leander/Anand Amritraj and Mahesh/Vijay Amritraj are in the Ex-Pro section.

The tournament also has a tennis handicapping scheme called "bisques", which are certain number of points allowed to be used by the teams whenever they want to add to the points they earn by playing.

Mahesh and Vijay started their match yesrterday against Louis Andreotti & Wayne Black, but the match was held up due to rains.

Leander and Anand were supposed to play David Smith & Jim Pugh later in the day, but the game is yet to begin at the time of writing this.