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Paes for du Maurier Open

Shailesh Soni

Indian tennis star Leander Paes will face Jason Stoltenberg of Australia today in the first round of the du Maurier Open in Montreal, Canada.

The winner of that match will play either Jiri Novak or 16th seed Jonas Bjorkman in the second round.

Paes is in the upper half of the 64-player draw, with top seed Patrick Rafter of Australia, fourth seed Tim Henman of Britain, fifth seed Richard Krajicek, eighth seed Tommy Haas, ninth seed Nicolas Kiefer and 16th seed Jonas Bjorkman.

Second seed Andre Agassi is in the other half alongwith third seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov and seventh seed Marcelo Rios.

Paes will also be playing doubles in the company of American Jared Palmer. The pair have been given top billing. They have a bye in the first round and will play the winner of the match between Novak/Rikl and Norval/Ullyett in the second round.

Paes and Palmer are in the upper half of the draw, with third seeds Delaitre/Santoro, sixth seeds Bjorkman/Rafter and seventh seeds Woodbridge-Woodforde.

Second seed Knowles/Nestor are in the lower half of the draw with fourth seeds Black/Stolle, fifth seeds Leach/Ferreira and eighth seeds Kafelnikov/Vacek.

With a purse of $ 2.45 million, the du Maurier Open is one of the prestigious Mercedes Super 9 championships on the ATP Tour. The list of champions is a Who's Who of international tennis, including six-time singles winner Ivan Lendl.

Patrick Rafter of Australia captured his first Mercedes Super 9 singles title at the National Tennis Centre at York University last year by defeating Richard Krajicek of The Netherlands.

Jim Grabb of the US and Martin Damm of the Czech Republic won the doubles title with a victory over Ellis Ferreira of South Africa and Rick Leach of the US.

Meanwhile, Prahlad Srinath let a golden chance to compete in a main draw of the tour for only the second time in his career slip away when he lost in the qualifying round to Jan Boruszewski of Germany 6-2, 6-2.

Srinath got five points for reaching the qualifier round, but it could have been much better had he reached the main draw.

Earlier, the luck of the draw pitted two Indians who are trying to work their way up the rankings and join Paes and Bhupathi on the main tour. Same country, but very different games.

Prahlad Srinath defeated his fellow-Indian Syed Fazaluddin, 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 in the first round.

But Syed Fazaluddin did qualify for the doubles, pairing with Jan Boruszewski later.