Nirupama-Renata routed

Nirupama Vaidyanathan and Renata Kolbovic of Canada crashed out of the women's doubles at the Australian Open 2001 on Wednesday. They lost to the Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, 6-1, 6-3 in a first round match, which lasted 55 minutes.

Renata Kolbovic served first in the first set and held with the help of three unforced errors from the Williams sisters. But in game 3 the pair was broken. Nirupama went through five deuces, before the Williams sisters broke her serve on their fourth break chance.

Then Renata dropped serve in game 5. From here on the Williams got stronger, and Renata/Nirupama were unable to hold their serves. The Williams won 11 games in a row as they took the first set 6-1.

In the second set too, the Williams were on a roll, breaking Renata/Nirupama at will. Nirupama stopped the Americans in game 6, when she managed to hold serve. Then Renata/Nirupama broke Venus Williams in the next game to make it 2-5. The next game saw two match-points, with Renata double faulting once. However, they held on to prolong the set before Serena served off the next game for a 6-1, 6-3 victory.

In the men's doubles, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi will start their quest for the Australian Open title on Thursday, when they face the 10th seeded Australian pair of Joshua Eagle and Andrew Florent in the first round.

Joshua Eagle and Andrew Florent have been playing together for a long time and are currently ranked seventh on the ATP rankings. They finished 2000 with the year-end ranking of 9.

The last time these two teams faced each other was at Dubai Open in 1999, when Eagle/Florent defeated the Indians, who were defending champions, in straight sets, in the quarter-finals.