Paes-Bhupathi knocked outin second round

DUBAI, FEB 11: Defending champions Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi crashed out of the doubles event of Dubai Open tennis tournament, los...

DUBAI, FEB 11: Defending champions Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi crashed out of the doubles event of Dubai Open tennis tournament, losing to Australian pair of Joshua Eagle and Andrew Florent in the second round today. The top-seeded Indian duo were dismissed 6-3, 6-4.

Eagle-Florent take on Wayne Black of Zimbabwe and Sandon Stolle of Australia in the next round.

Earlier last night, Paes-Bhupathi quelled Argentinians Pablo Albano and Daniel Orsanic 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-5) to move into the second round.

Story continues below this ad

In the first set tie-break, Orsanic sent Bhupathi’s serve into the net to concede the set to the Indians.

The second set could have gone to the Argentinians as they had a chance to break Paes and Bhupathi in the 11th game when they led 40-0 on Bhupathi’s serve. But Bhupathi held his serve to take the set into tie-breaker.Doubles third seeds Don Johnson and Francisco Montana and fourth seeds Pviet Norval and Kevin Ullyett were knocked out of the tournament last night.In the singles, fifth seed KarolKucera was stopped 7-6, 6-1 by Jerome Golmard of France in the second round.