Thaindian News

Cincinnati (Ohio), Aug 20 (IANS) Last week’s Rogers Cup champions India’s Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles of Bahamas survived a scare before prevailing over Spaniards Feliciano Lopez and Fernando Verdasco 5-7, 6-4, 12-10, in the opening round at the Cincinnati Masters here.
The fourth-seeded Indo-Bahamian pair rallied after losing a close first set to take the second and it was a touch and go in the tie-breaker which they eventually clinched Wednesday night.

Bhupathi and Knowles next play Frenchmen Michael Lorda and Joe-Wilfried Tsonga who knocked out fifth seed Bruno Soares and Kevin Ullyett 6-0, 6-3 in the second round as the Brazilian-Zimbabwean duo’s recent woes continued, losing their fifth straight match.

Bhupathi and Knowles are past champions here, the Indian winning in 2001 with his compatriot Leander Paes and and the Bahamian figuring in three victories with his long-standing partner Daniel Nestor of Canada in 1996, ‘98 and 2004.

Max Mirnyi and Andy Ram, who lost to Bhupathi and Knowles in the Rogers Cup final, got off to a solid start at the Western & Southern Financial Group tournament as they easily beat Americans Jesse Levin and Rajeev Ram 6-2, 6-2 in 51 minutes.

Mirnyi and Ram were the finalists at the other three hard-court ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tennis tournaments this season. They won the Sony Ericssson Open title in Miami, and were runners-up in Indian Wells and Montreal.

The three most recent efforts pushed the Belarusian Mirnyi and Israeli Ram up three spots to No. 5 in the 2009 ATP doubles rankings, boosting their chances of qualifying for the prestigious Barclay’s ATP World Tour finals in London.

Ram is looking to reach his third straight final in Cincinnati, where he won his first of two ATP World Tour Masters 1000 titles alongside countryman Jonathan Erlich in 2007. They came up just short of the title defence last year when they fell to Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan in the final. Mirnyi is a two-time Cincinnati champion, teaming up with Sweden’s Jonas Bjorkman to win back-to-back titles in 2005-06.

Mirnyi and Ram will next confront the top-seeded Bryans, whom they have defeated in two of their three previous meetings this season, including last week in the Montreal semi-finals.

Seventh seeds Wesley Moodie of South Africa and his Belgian partner Dick Norman got a walk-over from Czech Tomas Berdych and Germany Philipp Kohlschreiber as the German complained of fatigue after a tough three-set singles win over German Philipp Petzschner.