Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi
The ‘Indian Express’ fought a hard battle to get past Oliver Marach and Janko Tipsarevic and book a berth in the finals of the Sony Ericsson Open tennis tournament in Miami. Third seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi saved a match point en route to a hard-fought three-set win.
Playing their first tournament post the Australian Open this year, they got the better of the Serbian duo of Oliver Marach and Janko Tipsarevic 6-3, 5-7, (11-9) in a super tie-break after the first two sets were split.
Bhupathi and Paes led 6-3, 2-0 before Marach and Tipsarevic turned things around to even the match at one set all.
The Austrian-Serbian combination had a match point at 9-8 in the tie-break but lost the final three points to crash out.
They will meet Max Mirnyi and Daniel Nestor won who defeated fourth seeded Jurgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner 6-4 6-1 in their semifinal match.
Ironically, Mirnyi was Bhupathi’s partner in 2010 when they went down to Paes and Lukas Dlouhy in the summit clash at this tournament.
The final is a rematch of the semifinal clash at the Australian Open, in which Paes and Bhupathi were triumphant in three grinding sets.
Paes, who won this event last year with Lukas Dlouhy, said he is taking a relaxed approach to the finals.
“I just want to keep having fun, enjoy myself out there. We’ve had some good results this year, so if we keep playing like we have been all year, we should be fine,” Paes said.
Tags: Indian Express, Janko Tipsarevic, Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Miami Finals, Oliver Marach, Sony Ericsson Open, Tennis
