NEWS
SCHEDULES
COLUMNS
PREVIOUS TOURS
OTHER SPORTS
STATISTICS
INTERVIEWS
SLIDE SHOW
ARCHIVES

Paes, Bhupathi to have new partners for French Open

Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi will not defend their French Open doubles crown as a team this year. The two have parted ways and have been seen at recent tournaments with different partners.

It is learnt that Bhupathi will partner David Prinosil for the French Open, while Paes will pair with Dutchman Jan Siemerink, with who he won the the Disney US title last week and the Bermuda Challenger earlier.

Mahesh, who is partnering Mark Knowles at the Rome Masters this week, will also play the Hamburg Masters next week with Knowles. However, he will partner Kratzmann at St. Poelten the week after and then David Prinosil at the French.

Paes confirmed that he will be playing with Jan Siemerink for the rest of the year. The Indian ace said he has a minor knee injury which will keep him off the tour for two weeks - - which means he won't play next week's Jerusalem challenger - - but will be back in action at the French Open.

Meanwhile, eighth seeds Bhupathi and Knowles were upset by Martin Damm and Dominik Hrbaty, 6-7(2), 5-7 in the first round at the Rome Masters Series on Wednesday.

It was a closely-fought match and took about an hour and 40 minutes. It was a story about the futility of both teams to convert break chances where Bhupathi/Knowles got 1 of 17 and Damm/Hrbaty were 2 of 19.

The first set saw both the teams having one break each. All the games in the second set also seemed to go to break chances, with Bhupathi/Knowles being broken in the 11th game. Bhupathi/Knowles fought off triple match points and even had a break chance at advantage out in the 12th game, but could not save the match.

Damm/Hrbaty are the same team that had upset the fifth seeds Leander Paes/Wayne Arthurs at the Key Biscayne Masters 3-6, 7-5, 6-4, on the way to a final with wins over 4th seeds Haarhuis/Stolle and top seed OBrien/Palmer .

Hrbaty and Federer had beaten Paes/Arthurs the previous week at Indian Wells in straight sets too. Thus it proves that it was a very tough pair Bhupathi/Knowles faced yesterday. On the whole, it seems that Mahesh's return has been ahead of schedule with no alarming problems. Hopefully Bhupathi/Knowles can do better next week at the Hamburg Masters.

Mahesh and Mark Knowles were playing together for the first time. Knowles, 29 is from the Bahamas, and has 13 doubles titles to his credit. He had his biggest successes with long-term partner Daniel Nestor of Canada, but they have not played together this year as Nestor has been off the tour with surgery.