Tata Open: Paes-Bhupathi enter doubles quarterfinals

Top seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi crossed the first hurdle in their quest to annex the doubles title, which eluded them in the last two years, in the Tata ATP tour tennis championship in Chennai on Thursday night.

The Indian pair beat Thomas Johansson (Sweden) and Andrei Pavel (Romania) 6-3 4-6 6-4 to set up a quarterfinal clash against Juan Balcells (Spain) and George Bastle (Switzerland).

In the singles on Thursday evening, top seed Guillermo Canas (Argentina) using booming serves beat Ivo Karlovic of Croatia 7-5 6-2 to move into the quarterfinals, while Jiri Vanek (Czech) got the better of Noam Okun (Israel) 3-6 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 to reach the last eight.

Egged on by the home crowd, Paes and Bhupathi won the first set 6-3 and then led 4-3 in the second. But the Indian duo failed to capitalise on an opportunity that came their way through two break points with Johansson serving at 15-40. After they equalised four-all, Johansson and Pavel never looked back before taking the game to the decider.

In the third set, games went on serves initially as Pavel who was erratic in the first set raised his game a notch. Down 15-30 in the ninth game, it seemed as though Paes was to lose his serve but he managed to pull up with aggressive volleys.

In the tenth game, which proved to be vital for the Indians, Paes made all the difference by ripping two aggressive forehand service returns to push Johansson into 0-40. After the rivals managed to earn two points to reach 30-40, Bhupathi came up with a superb backhand return to clinch the tie.