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Paes-Siemerink crash; Bhupathi-Prinosil canter

Shailesh Soni

Leander Paes and Jan Siemerink bowed out of the French Open tennis championships on Friday when they lost their first round doubles match to the wild card pair of Guy Forget and Guillaume Raoux of France 6-7(5), 3-6.

In another first round match, played immediately after, 9th seeds Mahesh Bhupathi and David Prinosil beat the Australian pair of Wayne Arthurs and Michael Tebbutt 6-4, 7-5.

Paes was the defending champion along with Mahesh Bhupathi. It was at last year's French Open that the Indian pair won their first Grand Slam title.

The first set saw both teams holding serve before it went into the tie-breaker. Actually, Paes and Siemerink were 0 for 8 in break chances in the first set and had three set points in games 10 and 12 but could not convert them and went on to lose the set in a close tie-breaker at 6-7(5-7).

In the second game of the second set, Siemerink faced two break attempts at 15-40 on his serve and Forget/Raoux converted the chance, the only break chance which came in their way, to forge ahead.

Paes/Siemerink did come back in the seventh game to break Guillaume Raoux's serve, but could not sustain the pressure as Paes was broken i the very next game to give Forget/Raoux a 3-5 lead. Then Forget served for the match and wrapped it at 6-3.

Paes committed a mistake of letting Siemerink serve in the first game of the second set after going down in the first. Here is where he missed Bhupathi, because you can't trust anybody else really under such situations, and most people drop serve after losing a set like that.

Bhupathi and Prinosil had little difficulty in beating the pair of Arthurs and Tebbutt. in the straight sets 6-4 7-5. They will now face the Spainsh pair of Juan Ignacio Carrasco and Jairo Velasco Jr in the second round.

In the first set, games went with serve till the seventh, when Bhupathi/Prinosil converted their second break chance at AD out to go up 4-3. In the next game again Bhupathi/Prinosil went through a few deuces but did well to hold serve and take the set 6-4.

The second set started with Bhupathi/Prinosil facing a few decues and finally falling in the third break attempt to go down 0-2. However, the recovered splendidly and got the break back in game 5, winning four points in a row after Arthurs/Tebbutt served 30-0.

Bhupathi/Prinosil then held serve easily and won the next game with four straight points to go up 4-3 and up a break! Then, while serving for the match at 5-4, they again ran into trouble, facing a break point at 30-40 and dropped serve at AD out to allow Wayne Arthurs and Michael Tebbutt make it 5-5.

But they weren't done yet, as they forced the break in the very next game on their second chance to go up 6-5 and serve for the match once again.

They had double match-points at 40-15 but saw it go to deuce, before finally converting the 3rd match point at AD out to emerge triumphant. The match took an hour and five minutes to complete.

In the mixed doubles, Leander Paes will be playing with his usual partner Lisa Raymond of the United States. They are the second seeds.

Meanwhile, Bhupathi has chosen not to play mixed doubles to avoid straining his the shoulder.

Paes and Raymond have a first round bye and will play the winner of the first round match between Liezel Horn and Andrei Olhovskiy and Nana Miyagi and Michael Hill, in the second round.

Interestingly, Jan Siemerink is playing with Martina Navratilova and may end up facing Leander and Raymond in the third round.