Paes-Bhupathi in round 3

Shailesh Soni

The ace Indian doubles duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi moved into the third round of the French Open 2001 after defeating the American pair of Eric Taino and Jack Waite 7-6(4), 6-1 on Saturday.

The Indians started the match with a bang, breaking Eric Taino's serve in the very first game to take an early lead. After this the games went on with serves, but the Americans broke Paes's serve in the ninth game to level scores at 5-5. Both teams then held serve as the set drifted into the tie-breaker.

The Indians raced to a 4-0 lead and looked poised to take the tie-breaker. However, the Americans picked some quick points to make it 4-6 before Paes and Bhupathi converted double set points to wrap the set at 7-6(4)

In the second set, the Indians started of well, but were in deep trouble in the third game as the Americans had triple break point on Bhupathi's serve. However, they fought back in customary fashion to save them and take the game.

From then on, they didn't look back and got breaks in the 4th, on Taino's serve, and 6th, on Waite's serve, to take the set and the match.

The Indians will now face the winners of the second round match between the third seeded Czech pair of Jiri Novak and David Rikl and Juan Ignacio Carrasco of Spain and Ota Fukarek of the Czech Republic.

Earlier on Friday, Paes and Lisa Raymond moved into the second round of the mixed doubles, defeating the eighth seeded pair of Nathalie Tauziat of France and David Adams of South Africa 6-4, 7-5.

In the second round they face Sandrine Testud of France and Andrew Florent of Australia.

Paes and his long time partner Raymond of the US are unseeded this year due to the low individual doubles ranking of Paes.

The pair had withdrawn from the French Open last year due to a wrist injury to Paes in the third round.

Mahesh Bhupathi is pairing with Elena Likhovtseva of Russia. They are also unseeded and will face the second seeded pair of Cara Black of Zimbabwe and Sandon Stolle of Australia in the first round.

Mahesh last year played with Ai Sugiyama of Japan.