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Lareau, Paes have a good record together

Sebastien Lareau of Canada, who is currently the world No 4 in the doubles individaul rankings, will be Leander Paes's new doubles partner for the Australian Open and a few months later till Paes's regular partner Mahesh Bhupathi recovers from an injury.

However, Paes will partner Byron Black at the Gold Flake Open in Chennai next month.

Lareau became available as his Canadian partner Daniel Nestor too is nursing an injury and is expected to undergo surgery shortly.

Paes has played with Lareau in the past and as a pair they have done pretty well. The first time they played together was at the US Open in 1993, when they reached the semi-finals with upsets over seeded teams like Keil/Kruger and Nijssen/Suk, before losing to Damm/Novacek. That success helped both to break into the top-100 for the first time, with Paes moving from 144 to 90 and Lareau from 135 to 80.

Paes stayed between 75 and 125 in the doubles ranking for the next four years before breaking into the top 50 in mid 1997, and then into the top-10 by the year end in the company of Bhupathi.

Interestingly, Lareau did not play with Paes after US Open '93 till Wimbledon '94, where they again had good results, reaching the last 16, beating seeded teams like P.McEnroe/Reneberh and O'Brien/Stolle. The next time they played together was at US Open '94, where they advanced only one round after an upset over Ondruska/Talbot.

The next event Paes played was a Challenger in Jakarta, in '94, which is historically important because he reached the final with a guy called Mahesh Bhupathi who he partnered for the first time. Though Bhupathi was in a US college and did not become Paes's regular partner till 1996, Paes did not team up with Lareau again. Instead he had 15 different partners, of which only Don Johnson, Kevin Ullyett, Laurence Tieleman and Wayne Arthurs are the some of the better-known names.

One reason why Paes and Lareau have not played together much may be because Paes would have to play the AD court, which Leander said he will do at the Australian Open this time. They have played together only thrice, and all ocassions were Grand Slam events.

Lareau moved up the rankings faster after '93 - playing with Nestor and later with O'Brien - reaching top-30 in '94 itself. Somehow their paths cross again after five years - and once again it will be a Grand Slam where they will go in with no matches together for preparation, seeded No 1.

Paes hopes that Mahesh will be back in time for Davis Cup and Olympics. It is still doubtful if he will be there for the Davis Cup second round match after the Lebanon match, but Mahesh should be playing again at least by April or May with enough time for Olympics.

Lareau also hopes to play with Nestor at the Olympics.