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Another first round crash for Leander

Indian tennis star Leander Paes crashed out yet again in the first round of an ATP tournament.

Leander lost to Jason Stoltenberg of Australia 4-6, 2-6 in the first round of the du Maurier Open in Montreal, Canada. Last week, Leander had suffered a first round loss at the Mercedes-Benz Cup.

Stoltenberg broke Leander's serve once in the 7th game of the first set, and twice in the first and seventh games of the second set.

Leander played reasonably well, but couldn't catch a break throughout the match. After serving the first game and holding to go up 1-0, Leander had two break chances in the second game but couldn't convert. This was a very early turning point, as Leander didn't get another break chance until the final game of the match. Both players held serve until the 7th game, when Stoltenberg benefitted from two Leander double faults to break through and win the set 6-4.

During the first set, Leander had two foot fault calls, and some late, close line calls, going against him. This seemed to impact on his mood, and the two double faults on serve only made things worse. Though Leander fought back to 30-40 after being 0-40 down, he eventually lost the game and with it the first set thanks to a nice top-spin passing shot by Stoltenberg.

In the second set, the problems with line calls continued. Leander even argued with the chair umpire after a particularly bad call in the first game (on his serve) which took the score to 15-30. The incident seemed to fire Leander up, and he went ahead 40-30, but then Stoltenberg came back with three straight points and broke through to go ahead 1-0. From this point on, Leander really never got a chance to get back into the set, although he played some fine tennis along the way. Stoltenberg broke again in the seventh game to go up 5-2, and Stoltenberg served out the match at 6-2.

Stoltenberg was a tough one to beat, as he has been a top-30 player for close to 5 years. He doesn't give too many chances to his opponents, and to beat him Leander had to be on his best form -- which he hasn't been for some months now. Incidentally, one wonder if the absence of coach "Nails" Carmichael from the Leander camp for most of this year (the coach was undergoing surgery, and only got back on duty just before Wimbledon) has caused Leander's singles game to deteriorate a bit.

Now Leander is under pressure to get his singles game back in order as he is facing the prospect of dropping another 50-60 spots in the rankings, to somewhere around 185 or so, in three weeks, though he has only 20 points to defend for about 6 months after that. Thus for now, he just needs to work himself back into form.

Leander can rest now until his first doubles match which probably will be on Wednesday.

Syed Fazaluddin, pairing with Jan Boruszewski, meanwhile lost in the final round of the doubles qualifiers to Clement and Grosjean, 6-2, 6-3.