The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Srichaphan-Stepanek duo moves up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 03, 2006

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Srichaphan-Stepanek duo moves up

S.V. Sriram

Chennai: A new year, new season and new rules. The ATP, in a bid to spruce up the doubles game, had come up with a couple of rule changes — scoring system rather — which has been on trial for the last few months. All these were brought into focus during the first doubles match at the Chennai Open here on Monday.

The Thai-Czech pair of Paradorn Srichaphan and Radek Stepanek held its nerve in the match tie-break to prevail over the pair of Cyril Saulnier and Gilles Muller 6-4, 4-6, 10-4 spread over an hour and nine minutes to move into the second round.

From late last year, the deciding set has been done away with in doubles in case the two teams have split the sets equally.

In its place comes the 10-point match tie-break. In the first two sets too, advantage has been done away with. Instead only one point decides the winner of the game, with the receiver having the right to decide who receives the serve. All these factors came into play here on Monday.

Accepting the chances

Sport is all about grabbing your chances and making them count. Having lost the first set in 27 minutes Muller and Saulnier stepped up their game in the second. They managed to get three break points but on all occasions Srichaphan proved to be their nemesis.

The year 2005 has not been very memorable for Srichaphan. But the Thai showed no signs of rustiness as he and Stepanek combined well. Srichaphan in particular did exceedingly well at the net, his returns of serve were neat, the ace which he unleashed in the fourth game to force the deuce stood out.

But the pair of Muller and Saulnier was not to be denied, finally breaking serve in the 10th game and forcing the tie-break.

In the tie-break, Muller and Saulnier started out well with Muller holding serve. However, Stepanek and Srichaphan had other ideas.

Stepanek held his serve to make it 2-1 before breaking Saulnier to take the score to 3-1. Muller managed to pull one back when his blistering shot smacked right into Srichapan, 3-2.

But from then on it was all Srichaphan and Stepanek. They simply raced away with the points as a combination of unforced errors from Muller and Saulnier and some brilliant play by the Thai-Czech pair saw it wrap up the match.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport