Paes-Bhupathi rally to serve a double treat, enter final

Awaiting the Indian Davis Cup tandem in Sunday’s final are second seeded Wayne Black (Zimbabwe) and Neville Godwin (South Africa) who earlier ousted Americans Jonathan Stark and Paul Goldstein, 6-2, 6-1, in the other semifinal.

Black, Schuttler in final: Earlier, Zimbabwe’s Byron Black and Germany’s Rainer Schuttler set up a title clash in the singles.

The singles semi-finals petered out to be one-sided affairs today with fourth-seeded Blackthrashing 8th-seeded Dutchman John van Lottum 6-1, 6-1, while Schuttler had little difficulty in disposing of Peter Wessels, also of The Netherlands, 6-1, 6-3.

That Paes and Bhupathi feed on crowd support needs no emphasis as yet again, for the second night running, the Indian duo fought back splendidly from a seemingly lost position for a truly remarkable victory. In fact, it was not so much about tennis as their strength of character with the crowd getting into the match without any restraint. It looked like old times on the court as the two seemed to have finally sorted out their differences and got back to their winning ways.

After a disappointing start when they dropped serve in the very first game of the match that saw Knippschild and Tillstrom taking the first set, the Indians, winners here in the previous two editions, struck a purple patch.Tillstrom-Knippschild tried every trick they knew, but with inconsistency creeping in, they seemed to be fighting a losing cause.

Crowd support got usthrough’

Top seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi brought sanity to the day’s proceedings which witnessed dull and uninspiring singles semifinals at the Gold Flake Open ’99. Mikael Tillstrom and Jens Knippschild, who were practicing hard at the outside courts, trying out different variations before their semi-final encounter had their chances, but in the end Paes and Bhupathi’s attitude of not giving up paid off.

“Thank you guys, you got us through,” remarked Leander on the crowd support

.Paes and Bhupathi’s doubles career took off at the same place a few years ago. They will be looking forward to make it three-in-a-row. “We have been struggling. They had us down. It’s good we got the energy, the crowd gave us,” said Bhupathi in the post match comments. “We want to excite the crowd. So we played three sets,” added Paes in a lighter vein.

“It’s normal for us to play three sets and win. It’s fantastic for our camaraderie. One day Mahesh is struggling. I pull him out. One day I’m struggling,Mahesh helps me out. Today both of us were struggling. We managed to get the team together which helped us,” opined Paes.

“I know it is not easy to beat us. That too in front of this crowd,” Bhupathi concluded.