Oz Open: Bhupathi-Knowles in; Paes-Black out

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Melbourne, Jan 27: Indians had a mixed day in the Australian Open 2009 as Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles entered into semifinals of men's doubles and top seeded mixed doubles pair Leander Paes and Cara Black were out in the second round on Tuesday, Jan 27.

The third-seeded Indo-Bahamian duo of Bhupathi and Knowles overcame a second set deficit to beat the Spanish pair of Feliciano Lopez and Fernando Verdasco 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 in one hour and 28 minutes. The quarterfinal clash saw Bhupathi and Knowles break the Spanish pair thrice while dropping their own serve twice.

Viewers got to see a controlled game as the duo committed only four errors to 11 of their opponents. Bhupathi and Knowles will play Lukasz Kubot of Poland and Oliver Marach of Austria. However, Paes and Black, the reigning US Open champions, were outplayed 1-6, 5-7 by the unseeded Swiss-South African combine in just 64 minutes.

The Indo-Zimbabwean pair was broken twice by the winners. Among the juniors, top seed Yuki Bhambri continued his impressive showing as he reached the pre-quarterfinals of the singles and quarterfinals of the doubles with Chinese Taipei's Liang-Chi Huang.

In the singles second round, Yuki beat local Stephen Hoh 7-6 (1), 6-0 while in the doubles he and Liang, top-seeded pair, beat Italian Marco Bortolotti and Vladzimir Kruk of Belarus 6-3, 6-4.

However, it was curtains for Kaza Vinayak Sharma, who lost his singles second round match 1-6, 1-6 to Justin Eleveld of The Netherlands.

In girls' doubles, Kyra Shroff and her Canadian partner Eugenie Bouchard lost 4-6, 1-6 to the sixth seeded pair of American Christina McHale and Ajla Tomljanovic of Croatia in the second round.


OneIndia News (With inputs from Agencies)