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Paes-Siemerink triumph

Leander Paes and Jan Siemerink continued their winning streak in doubles, with a 6-3, 6-4 upset over the second seeded pair of Justin Gimelstob of the United States and Sebastien Lareau of Canada, in the finals of the $320,000 Disney US Claycourt Championships at Orlando.

This was the second title in two weeks for Paes and Siemerink. Last week they won the Bermuda challenger and now together have won 11 matches in a row.

In the first set, Siemerink opened serving and was looking a little nervous, but held on to take a 1-0 lead. In the next service game of Gimselstob, Lareau, looking nervous, struggled to keep his side of the court covered and, at the end of the game, Gimelstob, surprisingly hit two shots into the net to give Paes/Siemerink a 2-0 lead. Paes won his service game to make it 3-0. Lareau was then pushed to deuce before managing to hold the game with a ace. In the sixth game Gimelstob fired four excellent serves with 3 being aces, to take the game and reduce the deficit to 4-2. The next two games went with the serves. The ninth game of the set at 40-15 brought the best exchange at the net with a flurry of volleys and ground strokes as both teams were forced into defensive positions. Paes ended it with a terrific shot that just scraped the baseline, to take the set at 6-3.

In the second set, both sides had their tactics firmly in place, with Paes and Siemerink hitting everything at Lareau. Gimelstob and Lareau did their best to keep the ball away from Paes. Gimelstob played some inspired tennis to keep his side alive and kept the score at serves, until at 5-4, 40-30, Siemerink served a perfect ace to end the set and win the match 6-3, 6-4.

This was Leander's 17th doubles title, and the second title in the company of somebody other that Mahesh Bhupathi (He had won the Newport title with Wayne Arthurs last year - ATP does not count the shared title in Siemrink's company at the the abandoned final in sHertogenbosch last year).

Beating the Woodies and Gimelstob/Lareau (the top two seeds) in straight sets is quite impressive. The title gives Paes 175 ATP points which should move him up a couple of spots from the 6th ranking he was last week. For Siemerink, this would be a pretty good jump of around 25 spots from 103 to inside 80 (He was 113 before joining with Paes last week and winning the Bermuda challenger). They each made over $11,000 from the title.

Earlier Leander/Siemerink entered their second successive final beating Coetzee-Haygarth, 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 in the semi-final. They also had a 7-6(10), 6-2, upset win over the Woodies in the quarter-finals.

Mahesh Bhupathi and Wayne Arthurs lost a close match in the quarter-finals, 5-7, 6-7(4) to the Bryan twins, Bob and Mike.