Paes-Bhupathi vow to fight on

India's Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi were annointed the logical successors to the Woodies when the Australian doubles supremos called it a day.

In 1999 the pair reached the final of all four Grand Slams -- a feat not accomlished since 1952 -- and won the French Open and Wimbledon.

But at the height of their success they split and since getting back together before last year's US Open they have found it tough going. Their latest setback came on Thursday when they were knocked out of the Australian Open at the first hurdle by a pair of unknown Australians -- Joshua Eagle and Andrew Florent.

"It just didn't work out today. It was a tough match, a tough draw. The fact that we haven't played too many tough matches recently didn't help. We're not as sharp as we should be," Paes said.

But the dejected pair vowed they would do whatever it takes to get back on top of the doubles pile.

If it means going back to satellite tournaments with miserable prize-money, they'll do it.

"We have to take a step back and take a long hard look at our game," Paes said.

"We're playing spurts of good tennis and plenty of not so good tennis. We know we're one of the best doubles teams out there and we don't want to let people down.

"With the Woodies retiring, we were expected to be the next to take over. That's a responsibility and also a certain challenge for us.

"We have to take pride in our work ethic, but we're on a bit of a low. We don't want to be one-year wonders."

The pair weighed into the debate on the future of doubles tennis -- being discussed by officials in Melbourne.

It has been suggested that doubles could be cut to two sets with a tie-breaker and Bhupathi said he was in favour of whatever makes the discipline more attractive.

"The key problem is that no one person promotes doubles," he said. "It's strange. Other than Australia, India and South Africa doubles never gets on TV. That needs to be looked at."

While women's doubles is boosted by many of the top names taking part, like Martina Hingis and the Williams sisters, the men's format struggles to find star players.

Paes said it is also going to be difficult while the singles competition is five sets.

"It would be great to see more top players playing doubles but from the players point of view it's tough to play singles and doubles year through," he said.

"I don't think many players are up to five sets of singles then coming out to play doubles. I know if I knew I had a chance to win singles tournaments I wouldn't play doubles."