The Hindu : Sport : Bhupathi-Stepanek pair in semifinals

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 07, 2007
ePaper

Sport

Sport

Bhupathi-Stepanek pair in semifinals

ON COURSE: Mahesh Bhupathi (serving) and Radek Stepanek took out the second-seeded pair of Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi. — Photo: AFP

PARIS: Mahesh Bhupathi and Radek Stepanek stormed their way into the men's doubles semifinals with an upset win over second seeds Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi at the French Open.

However, Leander Paes's campaign came to an end with a quarterfinal defeat in mixed doubles on Tuesday.

Paes and his American partner Meghan Shaughnessy went down to the Chinese-Austrian duo of Sun Tiantian and Julian Knowle 6-4, 4-6, 7-10.

Bhupathi and Czech Republic's Stepanek upstaged Sweden's Bjorkman and Belarussian Mirnyi 3-6, 6-1, 7-6(6).

Bhupathi and Stepanek did not have a good start and had their back against the wall after they lost the first set.

See-saw contest

But they responded with alacrity and converted two breakpoints, apart from saving all three in the second set, to stretch it to the decider where they held their nerve to end up on the right side of the see-saw contest.

It took them two and a quarter hours to get past the Bjorkman-Mirnyi pair, with the final set alone lasting more than an hour.

Against the Sun-Knowle pair, Paes and Shaughnessy seized the early initiative by grabbing the first set but things gradually started to slip through their fingers as they could not tighten the noose.

Sun and Knowle broke their Indo-American opponents twice to take the second set and kept their cool in the super tie-break to walk away with a win. — PTI

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

Sport