The local hopes of seeing home stars Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi facing each other across the net were shattered. With Paes and his partner Nenand Zimonjic losing in the semi-finals, the Super Sunday is now just reduced to a face-off between the top two seeds Paradon Srichaphan and Carlos Moya in the singles final.With Mahesh Bhupathi and his Swedish partner Jonas Bjorkman already booking their final berth, the Chennai crowd expected Paes to keep his part of the deal. And expectations were not out of place as the Indo-Serb pair was seeded second in the tournament.But that was not to be as Yen-Hsun Yu (Chinese Tapei) and Rainer Scheuttler (Germany) proved far too strong. In a match of fluctuating fortunes Paes and Zimonjic lost 3-6, 6-3, 4-6 with the encounter lasting an hour and forty minutes.With Paes having to adjust with the new partner, it was always going to be difficult. And it did reflect in their game as the Serbian often found his return of serves going awry. Paes had to often make up for him and taking advantage of this weakness their rivals shut them out easily.However, there is still some hope in the form of Bhupathi and it is up to him and his partner to lift the spirits of the Chennai crowd with the doubles title.
