rediff.com

Rediff News  All News 
  »  » Paes-Dlouhy in Weber Open final

Paes-Dlouhy in Weber Open final

June 14, 2008 01:26 IST

Leander Paes [ Images ] and Lukas Dlouhy [ Images ] battled their way into the doubles final in the 713,000 euros Gerry Weber Open tennis tournament in Halle, Germany [ Images ], on Friday.

The fourth seeded Indo-Czech pair scored a thrilling 6-4, 0-6, 10-4 (match tie-break) victory over Ivan Ljubicic and Robin Soderling [ Images ] in the semi-finals.

Bad weather conditions forced match to be halted for an hour after Paes and Dlouhy took the first set. But after play resumed, Ljubicic and Soderling made the most of a 4-0 lead and took the second set 6-0.

However, Dlouhy and Paes quickly regained composure in the tie-break and won the last six points to seal the match at 10-4.

In the final they will meet the winners of the other semi-final between wild cards Christopher Kas - Philipp Petzschner of Germany and the Russian-German pair of Mikail Youzhny-Mischa Zverev.

The former beat Marc Gicquel and Fabrice Santoro [ Images ] 6-4, 7-5, while the latter secured a passage to the last four at the cost of Radek Stepanek and Tomas Berdyc, who gave a walk-over.