Bhupathi-Lareau seeded 8th

Mahesh Bhupathi will partner Sebastien Lareau of Canada at the $800,000 RCA championships, being played at Indianapolis.

The duo are seeded eight in the tournament and face the wildcard team of Mardy Fish of the United States and Andrei Pavel of Romania in the first round.

Bhupathi/Lareau are placed in the upper half of the draw and their likely quarter-final opponents are top seeds Jonas Bjorkman and Todd Woodbridge, who have a first round bye.

Max Mirnyi of Belarus and Sandon Stolle of Australia are the second seeds and are placed in the lower half of the draw.

Bhupathi's regular partner Leander Paes is taking a break to rest his hip, which has been bothering him since Wimbledon. Paes decided to skip the Indianapolis doubles this week as he has to play the next three weeks at the US Open qualifiiers and main draw. If he had played at this week's event, it would have been five weeks of continuous play, and could have proved detrimental to the Indians' chances at the US Open.

The Indian duo have moved up to fourth place in the ATP doubles race this year. More importantly, Bhupathi and Paes's 52-week individual doubles entry rankings are now at nine and 11 respectively, which should be enough to give them a fourth or fifth seeding at the US Open.

Mahesh has 2915 points and Leander 2684. In team rank -- doubles race, they have 471 race points from this year's tournaments and 2355 entry points from the 52-week system.

The Indians are 8-3 against the top-10 teams so far this year. They have two wins over the world No 2 Novak/Rikl; two over the world No 7 Hill/Tarango; one over the world No 1 Bjorkman/Woodbridge; one over the world No 3 Johnson/Palmer, one over the world No 5 Pala/Vizner and one over the world No 6 Bryans brothers.

Their three losses are: one each against world No 1 Bjorkman/Woodbridge, world No 6 Bryans twins and world No 9 Eagle/Florent.

Meanwhile, Syed Fazaluddin entered the final of the singles qualifier at the $50,000 GHI Bronx Tennis Classic Challenger, being played at Bronx, the United States.

The Indian Davis Cupper, seeded seventh in the qualifiers, defeated Julien Cassaigne of France 7-5, 7-5 in his second round match. Earlier, the Indian had defeated wildcard entrant Doug Root of the United States 6-3, 6-4 in the first round.

The Indian will face top seed Matthew Breen of Australia in the final.

Another Indian, Mustafa Ghouse qualified for the main draw of the $15,000 Great Britain F7 futures being played at Cumberland, Great Britain.

Seeded third in the qualifiers, he defeated Jeffrey Viskovich of Australia 6-3, 6-4 in the second round and then went on to defeat 11th seed Ibrahim Kimmerling of Germany 7-6(7), 6-4 to qualify.

Mustafa will now face wildcard Matthew Smith of Great Britain in the first round.