Twice Leander Paes lost his cool and slammed the racquet on the court. It showed how badly he wanted to win at his 'home event'.
Paes and his new partner Martin Damm clawed back from the brink of defeat on Monday night to advance to the quarter-finals of the Chennai Open. The top seeds and crowd favourites beat Ashley Fisher and Justin Gimelstob 4-6, 7-6 (3), 10-3 in a thrilling match at the SDAT stadium.
With the victory, Paes made it three in a row for India.
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Though Gimelstob and Fisher dominated for most part of the game, the experience of Paes-Damm changed it around in the two tie-breakers.
"It was not easy going into a tough match with a new partner, but I'm happy we came through," said Paes after the game.
Paes and Damm were a lot more solid in the second set, but more than that it was their mental toughness that mattered when they were thrown into difficult situations.
Both players, when serving to stay in the match, served out love games to take the set to the tie-break. The Indian, whose serve is the weak link in his game, went up 30-0 with two service winners at 4-5.
It proved to be a crucial game as the pair took off from there, Paes patrolling the net as effectively as ever and Damm providing the support at the baseline.
They won the second set tie-break 7-3 and then took the third set tie-break easily at 10-3.
During the post-match conference, which concentrated largely on the new set of rules for doubles matches, Damm said that he was privileged to partner Paes.
"Leander is a fighter you know," said the Czech, "He is one of the best players ever and I was really glad that he asked me after the US Open whether we could team up."
Neither of them was impressed by the tie-break rule and said that it helped the weaker teams to earn better results.
"Honestly, we had no business winning here," said Paes, "The guys played well for one and three quarters of the match and still it's us who'll be going through."
Damm was more critical of the ATP and said that the rules, supposedly introduced to make doubles viewer friendly and get more singles players interested, was not going to make a difference.
"I don't think a Roger Federer or a Rafael Nadal is going to play doubles because of this," Damm said, adding that singles matches on clay went longer than most of the doubles games.
"At the French Open this time, a match, after 45 minutes, was at 2-2. If the ATP wants to shorten games to get in more sponsorship and publicity they should also introduce these rules in singles," he added.
In the other doubles game, Paradorn Srichaphan and Radek Stepanek beat Gilles Muller and Cyril Saulnier 6-4, 4-6, 10-4 to enter the quarter-finals.
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