Lacklustre start to World Doubles meet

Yet, after all the declarations that preceded the Championship, the tournament opener was uninspiring, at best and not really what one would expect from an event supposedly showcasing the best in the world. Both teams – Australians Josh Eagle and Andrew Florent and the Brazilian-Argentine combine of Jaime Oncins and Daniel Orsanic – were lacklustre for most of the hour-and-a-half long match.

The only sparks happened when Oncins argued against a rather unfair code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct after the last point of the first set. That Florent and Eagle managed to make things really difficult for the South Americans in the event, by wrapping up the first match 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 despite their pallid play, is an indication that Lady Luck is definitely siding with the men from Down Under.

‘‘We haven’t played together in over a month,’’ said Eagle of himself and Florent after the match. And those guys probably haven’t played together for even longer, the way they were playing. ‘‘We got off to a great start, something that isn’t always easy, and then we kind of lost momentum and they got theirs before we came back into the match.’’ That really, is no excuse.

These are after all the World Championships and in Florent’s own words on Tuesday, this was something the duo ‘‘had been working towards from the beginning of the year.’’ If they had to come up with something defensive for the way they played, then perhaps they could have done better.

As neither team is really fancied, at the moment, to be crowned champion at the end of the week, it was the second match that was expected to be the real appetizer before the day’s feature match between Bhupathi-Paes and Paul Haarhuis-Sandone Stolle. And that match didn’t disappoint. In a major surprise, the American-South African, left-right combine of Don Johnson and Piet Norval demolished third seeded Americans Alex O’Brien and Jared Palmer 7-5, 7-6 (9-7) to make the already unpredictable Gold Group an even more complicated affair.