Third seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi saved a match-point en route to a hard-fought three-set win over Oliver Marach and Janko Tipsarevic to book a berth in the final of the Sony Ericsson Open tennis tournament in Miami.
The third-seeded Indian pair won 6-3, 5-7, 11-9 to set up a clash with second seeds Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor, who defeated fourth seeded Jurgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner 6-4 6-1 in their semi-final.
Bhupathi and Paes led 6-3, 2-0 before Marach and Tipsarevic turned things around to even the match at one set all.
"We let our lead slide. It got tight, down match-point, but Leander and I have been in the situation before and continued to work for each point," Bhupathi conceded.
The Austrian-Serbian combination had a match-point at 9-8 in the tie-break but lost the final three points and?crashed out.
The final is a rematch of the semi-final clash at the Australian Open, in which Paes and Bhupathi were triumphant in three grinding sets.
Paes, who won this event last year with Lukas Dlouhy, said he is taking a relaxed approach to the final.
"I just want to keep having fun, enjoy myself out there. We've had some good results this year, so if we keep playing like we have been all year, we should be fine," Paes said.
