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Mahesh, Leander to defend Toronto title

The top-seeded pair of Mahesh Bhupathi and Yevgeny Kafelnikov lost in the semifinal of the $915,000 Mercedes Cup clay court tournament in Stuttgart, Germany.

They were beaten, in a very close match, 6-3, 3-6, 6-7 (9-11) by the unseeded French pair of Olivier Delaitre and Fabrice Santoro, ranked 42nd in the world ATP doubles ranking.

Earlier they defeated eighth seeds Kempers/Kitinov in the quarterfinals 7-6(5), 7-6(3).

Mahesh and Kafelnikov, paired together for the first time, shared $20,000 for their last four placing.

Mahesh, now ranked number three in the world, individually, in doubles (his pairing with Leander Paes is also ranked third in the world) earned 133 points including 18 bonus points from this tournament. More importantly, he defended the points he had to have defended next week, and thus finds himself ahead of the game.

This week will see Mahesh at the Istanbul Challenger, Turkey, while friend and doubles partner Leander Paes will be at the Windy City Classic-Winnteka Challenger beginning Monday. Paes, who won his first ever career singles title earlier this month when he took the Hall of Fame tennis classic at Newport, Rhode Island, is seeded second in this event, behind Diego Nargiso of Italy.

Prahlad Srinath, bidding to join Paes in the main round at the Winnetka Challenger, lost out in the qualifiers to Scott Humphries of the US, who is seeded 587 in the ATP rankings.

Next week, Leander and Mahesh will defend their doubles points, and rankings, at the du Maurier Open in Toronto, where they are defending champions. This time round, however, the Indian duo will find the going tough as they seek to defend the 448 points they earned at the event last year, since unlike last year, they will face both top-ranked pairs, the Woodies of Australia and the Dutch combo of Haarhuis and Eltingh.

Leander is then expected to go to the Binghampton challenger, instead of the Great American Insurance ATP Championship at Cincinnati, the week after du Maurier Open in Toronto. Since the Indian pair do not have too many points to defend that year, they reckon that it would be a good time to notch up some singles points.

Getting singles points is particularly crucial to Leander, now 103 in the world and aspiring to crack the top 100 at least by season-end. More points mean that he will be sure of getting into the main draw of tournaments after the US Open.

Interestingly, the US Open main draw ends at player number 104, with 102 of those confirming their participation, making for one of the strongest fields this year.