The Hindu : Sport : Paes-Damm pair made to sweat

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

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Sport

Paes-Damm pair made to sweat

S.V. Sriram

WELL DONE MATE: Radek Stepanek (left) and Paradorn Srichaphan kept their cool in the match tie-break against Cyril Saulnier and Gilles Muller. — Photo: R. Ragu

Chennai: A new year, new season and new rules. The ATP in a bid to spruce up the doubles game has come up with a couple of rule changes and has been using it on a trail basis for the last few months. All these were brought into focus in both the doubles matches at the Chennai Open here on Monday.

But for the sparse centre court crowd at the Nungambakkam SDAT stadium that would have been the last thing on its mind as it egged on home favourite and four-time doubles champion here, Leander Paes and his new partner, doubles specialist Martin Damm from the Czech Republic.

The top-seeded pair roared back from a set down to dismantle the combination of Australian Ashley Fisher and American Justin Gimelstob 4-6, 7-6, 10-3.

Earlier the Thai-Czech pair of Paradorn Srichaphan and Radek Stepanek held their nerve in the match tiebreak to prevail over Cyril Saulnier and Gilles Muller 6-4, 4-6, 10-4 spread over an hour and nine minutes.

The new rule

The change in doubles is that the deciding set has been done away. In its place comes the 10-point match tiebreak. Advantage at deuce has also been done away with. Instead the first team to score a point wins the game, with the receiver getting to choose who receives the serve.

But the move came in for a fair share of criticism from Paes and Damm. Candid enough to admit that Fisher and Gimelstob dominated for a set and three-quarters of the second, Paes said, "Martin and I think that this rule is not a good one in particular at all. It seems to favour the weaker team. It is a sort of a lottery. Whoever plays the points in the tiebreaker well, wins."

Paes, was back to his old self soon as he and Damm started to jell really well towards the end. The clutch of unforced errors from Fisher and in particular, Gimelstob, also helped the pair a lot.

After scraping through a closely fought tiebreaker in the second set, the pair of Damm and Paes got off to a great start in the match tiebreaker with Paes serving up a blistering ace.

Quickly building up a 4-1 lead, Damm and Paes, never allowed their opponents a chance to come back and allowed them only two more points before wrapping up the match in double quick time.

Srichaphan impresses

In the earlier match, Srichaphan seemed to show no signs of rustiness as he and Stepanek got off to a good start. The year 2005 has not been a memorable one for Srichaphan but on Monday he was particularly good at the net, his returns of serve were neat and the ace, which he unleashed in the fourth game to force the deuce and deny his opponents stood out.

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