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Paes, Bhupathi scrape into second round

The top seeded India pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi went through several anxious moments before making it to the second round of the French Open doubles championships yesterday. After winning the first set rather easily, they struggled in the next two before overcoming J Carrasco and J Velasco 6-2, 4-6, 7-5.

In the second round, the Indians will meet the combination of Jean-Rene Lisnard/Michael Llodra, who defeated Julian Alonso/Alex Lopez Moron 4-6, 6-4, 7-5. Should they advance further, they would run into the winner of the match between Lan Bale/Grant Stafford and 15th seeds Piet Norval/Kevin Ullyett.

In another match of the first quarter of the upper half of the the draw, 10th seed Jiri Novak/David Rikl defetaed Eduardo Nicolas/German Puentes 5-7, 6-4, 6-0, to earn a meeting with Brandon Coupe/Paul Goldstein in the second round.

In one of the biggest upsets so far in the doubles, third seeds Todd Woodbridge/Mark Woodforde lost to the little-known pair of Nebojsa Djordjevic/Gabor Koves 3-6, 7-5, 4-6.

Other fancied pairs to go down were the 11th seeded pair of Donald Johnson/Cyril Suk, who lost to Mariano Hood/Sebastian Prieto of Argentina 5-7, 6-4, 2-6, and 14th seeds Jim Grabb/David MacPherson, who lost to Gustavo Kuerten /Nicolas Lapentti 6-7(4-7), 2-6.

Sixth seeds Olivier Delaitre/Fabrice Santoro of France won their first round match against countrymen Arnaud Clement/Sebastien De Chaunac 7-5, 6-3.

Yesterday's results meant that only four seeded teams are left in the upper half of the draw, alongwith Paes and Bhupathi.

The second round will see some intesting matches will be between Nicklas Kulti/Mikael Tillstrom and Gustavo Kuerten/Nicolas Lapentti, and Olivier Delaitre/Fabrice Santoro and Wayne Arthurs/Andrew Kratzmann

In the lower half of the draw too, three seeded teams went crashing out in the first round. 12th seeds Sebastien Lareau/Alex O'Brien lost to Goran Ivanisevic/Jeff Tarango 6-7 (1-7), 4-6; 13th seeds Patrick Galbraith/Justin Gimelstob lost to Fernando Meligeni/Jaime Oncins 1-6, 6-4, 2-6; and 9th seeds David Adams/John De Jager lost to Andrew Florent/Andrei Olhovskiy 5-7, 5-7.

The seeded pairs to win in the first round were fifth seeds Jonas Bjorkman/Patrick Rafter, who beat the French pair of Arnaud Di Pasquale/Sebastian Grosjean 6-3, 6-1; 16th seeds Yevgeny Kafelnikov/Max Mirnyi, who beat Scott Humphries/Jack Waite 7-5, 6-3; and seventh seeds Paul Haarhuis/Jared Palmer, who beat Lucas Arnold/Aleksander Kitinov 6-1, 6-2.

An interesting clash coming up in this quarter in the seond round will be that between Byron Black/Wayne Ferreira and Goran Ivanisevic/Jeff Tarango

In the mixed doubles, both Paes and Bhupathi have new partners this year. Paes will be playing with Lisa Raymond. They have been seeded No 1, while Bhupathi is pairing up with Ai Sugiyama. They are seeded third. The top 16 seeds have byes into the second round in the 48-team draw, so the Indians will not be seen in action for another couple of days.