The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Schuettler and Lu duo wins doubles

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 11, 2005

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Schuettler and Lu duo wins doubles

By K. Keerthivasan

CHENNAI, JAN. 10. The unheralded pair of Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei and Rainer Schuettler of Germany fought the key points well and survived a match point to defeat the top-seeded pair of Jonas Bjorkman of Sweden and Mahesh Bhupathi of India 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(4) in the Chennai Open doubles final.

It was never easy from the beginning for the top-seeds. They struggled to hold their serves and had to stave off break points several times.

Breaking Bhupathi's serve in the sixth game, Lu-Schuettler pair ran up a 4-2 lead, and consolidated on it to win the first set without much difficulty.

In the second set, Bhupathi chipped in more with his hard serves and winners from the back-court.

The pair broke Schuettler in the ninth game to go 5-4 up. Bjorkman held his serve after saving a break point to take the match to the decider.

Schuettler was broken in the seventh game of the final set, but it was quashed when Bjorkman was immediately broken.

With the scores being level at 5-5, Bjorkman had an opportunity to serve out the match after breaking Schuettler's serve. The top-seeded pair even had a match point, but squandered it.

In the tie-breaker, Bjorkman-Bhupathi duo fought back from 1-4 down to 3-4, but Lu-Schuettler pair came up with some fine winners to finish off the match in 170 minutes.

The winning pair got $16,500, while the runner-up received $9,700.

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