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Paes, Bhupathi meet Ruah, Sa in opener

The top seed Indian pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi will face qualifiers Maurice Ruah and Andre Sa in the second round of the Stella Artois Tennis Championships later today. Maurice Ruah and Andre Sa beat B Coupe/M Merklein 6-2, 6-4 in the first round yesterday to set up a meeting with the French Open champions.

The Indians will be facing a team which has already had three matches on grass, certainly not the ideal transition from clay to grass. Past performances show that the "Indian Express" normally find the first match the toughest to get through. Hope they can get past this first contest which launches their build-up for Wimbledon.

Yesterday's first round results saw two prominent casulties in Boris Becker and Pete Sampras. The two former No. 1 players on the ATP Tour singles rankings teamed up and were defeated in the first round by Ben Ellwood and Michael Hill 6-4, 6-4.

Neil Broad and Tim Henman were favourites with the British crowd, but that did not help them in the end. In a very close match, they lost to American Jim Courier and Mark Knowles of the Bahamas, who won 4-6, 7-6(11) and 6-4.

The second set tiebreak was long, but is was eclipsed by the one Marius Barnard/Brent Haygarth and Byron Black/Wayne Ferreira played in the third set of their first round encounter. Barnard/Haygarth won 6-2, 4-6 and 7-6(12).

Goran Ivanisevic and Mark Philippoussis teamed up to form what is probably the hardest serving doubles team on the ATP Tour. They won their first round match against Jim Grabb and Don Johnson 6-4, 4-6 and 6-2.

The other experienced doubles teams who won their matches were: the seventh seed and Hamburg champions Wayne Arthurs and Andrew Kratzmann, who defeated James Greenhalgh/Nenad Zimonjic 6-3 and 6-4; fifth seed Sebastien Lareau and Alex O'Brien, who overcame strong resistance from David Roditi and Michael Sell to win 6-2, 2-6 and 6-1; and eighth seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov/Max Mirnyi, who won an interesting match against the Bryan twins 6-3 and 7-5.

In the other second round matches today, fifth seed Sebastien Lareau and Alex O'Brien will play T.J. Middleton and Michael Tebbutt; seventh seed and Hamburg champions Wayne Arthurs and Andrew Kratzmann will play Brian MacPhie and Jeff Tarango; Goran Ivanisevic and Mark Philippoussis will face Jim Courier and Mark Knowles, and fourth seed Martin Damm and Cyril Suk will face Barnard/Haygarth.