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Paes-Adams out of mixed doubles

In Melbourne, the 6th seeded pair of Leander Paes and Katrina Adams lost their first round mixed doubles match to the unseeded pair of Chris Haggard of South Africa and Els Callens of Belarus 6-7(2-7), 3-6 at the Australian Open.

Paes and Adams, seeded six out of 32 pairs, were a shade less focused than Haggard/Callens. The hard-hitting Callens, who even aced Paes once, perhaps made the difference. In fact, she was the only player among the four who did not drop serve in the one-hour, 10-minute match.

The match started with a Paes/Adams service game. But they were broken right away in the 3rd game on Leander's serve. Again in the 5th game with Adams serving, they were down 2 break points. But they quickly pulled back to save the game and broke Haggard/Callens in the next to make it 3-3.

Then both the teams went with serve till the tiebreak which was over quickly at 7-2.

In the second set, Paes/Adams dropped the second game on Adams serve and found themelves down 0-3. The best chance may have been at 2-4 when they had their opponenet to deuces, but Haggard/Callens held for a 5-2 lead, and it was soon over at 3-6.

It semed to be a reasonably close match, but a straight sets loss in the end. One good thing is that Leander can now focus on just the doubles, and not get tired playing a lot of tennis, which is taking a heavy toll on him.

''Right now, I'm battling injuries,'' Paes had said after his first-round singles loss earlier in the week, complaining that he was not able to get sufficient rest in order to give his sore stomach muscle and injured left heel time to mend.

Asked why he played in the mixed doubles if he was worried about his physical condition, Paes replied that he had signed up for it and was committed to playing.

Now that he is out of the event, he can concentrate his energies on the men's doubles where, with Mahesh Bhupathi, he is the top seed.

Leander and Mahesh will play their 3rd round doubles match against David Adams and John Lafnie DeJager on Sunday.

Leander's doubles partner Mahesh Bhupathi, who is a Grand Slam title winner - having taken the French Open mixed doubles title with Japanese Rika Hiraki in 1997 - will play his first mixed doubles match on Sunday.

Mahesh is with his regular partner Mirjana Lucic, the teen sensation from Croatia, and will meet Martin Damm of Czechoslovakia and Karin Schwendt of Austria.

Mahesh Bhupathi started pairing with Mirjana Lucic, who is currently ranked 20 in doubles, from Wimbledon 1998. In the very first Grand slam they reached the finals, where they lost to Max Mirnyi and Serena Williams 6-4, 6-4.

Next tournament they played together was US Open 1998, where they lost in the quarterfinals.