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Paes, Bhupathi show feet of clay in French Open semifinal

Just when they most needed it, their normally reliable service game let them down. And the Indian duo of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi, seeded third at the French Open, went down tamely to the unseeded Mark Knowles of the Bahamas and Daniel Nestor of Canada, 6-1, 6-7 (6-8).

The Indian pair were broken repeatedly in the first set, and though they fought back in the second to hold their serves and take their opponents into the tie-break, they could never seriously threaten the serves of either Nestor or Knowles.

This pretty much made the result of the tie-break pretty much a foregone conclusion. And the Indian pair, just a win away from taking their first Grand Slam title, bowed out on clay to the same combination that had, in the round of 16, done in the top-ranked Australian pair of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde.

Earlier story:

Paes-Bhupati storm past Woodies in points tally

AT the time of writing this, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi are waiting in the players' lounge of Stade Roland Garros.

Waiting for their semifinal game against Daniel Nestor and Mark Knowles.

Waiting, too, for their chance to make history, by becoming the first Indians to take the top ranking in the world of tennis.

Ironically, Nestor and Knowles, unseeded at the French Open, were responsible for knocking the world's top ranked doubles outfit, the Woodies, out of the tournament -- ironic, simply because taking over the top slot from the Woodies has been a long held ambition of the Indian duo.

Individually, too, the two friends and partners are poised to touch their highest rankings ever. The 25-year-old Paes (he will actually complete 25 on 17th of this month) is now ranked 7th individually, in doubles while his 24-year-old partner (who, coincidentally, will celebrate his birthday on June 7, hopefully with a title) is ranked one place higher, at six.

This year, the Paes-Bhupathi combine have taken off from where they had left off, last season, when they hit one of the hottest winning streaks in contemporary tennis history.

Their first outing was in Doha, Qatar, for the $1,000,000 Qatar Mobil Open between January 5-11. Played on a hardcourt surface, the Indian duo defeated Oliver Delaitre and Santoro in three sets, 6-4, 3-6, 6-4.

January 19-February 1 saw them turn out in Melbourne, Australia for the Aus $4, 740,500 1998 Ford Australian Open. On a hard court that suits their style of play, the Indian combine stormed into the semifinal before going down in a tough five-setter to the Bjorkman-Eltingh combine, losing 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

Paes and Bhupathi then moved to Key Biscayne, USA, for the $2,700,000 Lipton Championships.

Ranked fourth behind the Woodies, Jacco Eltingh-Paul Haarhuis and Yevgeny Kafelnikov-Daniel Vacek, the Indian duo didn't have too good a time of it there.

They then moved to the $430,000 Gold Flake Open in Chennai (April 6-12), where they were ranked below the then world's best combine of Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde.

The famed Woodies, who have been on a decline ever since the first signs of personal animosity surfaced between them late in the previous season, lost to Arnaud Clement and Jerome Golmard in the quarterfinals, while the India duo went on to defeat the fourth seeded pairing of Olivier Delaitre and Max Mirnyi in the final, coming back from a first set deficit (6-7(5) to take the next two sets, 6-3, 6-2.

Next stop Monte Carlo, Monaco, for the $2,450,000 Republic National Bank Monte Carlo Open between April 20-26. Seeded fourth behind the Woodies, Jacco Eltingh-Paul Haarhuis, Yevgeny Kafelnikov-Daniel Vacek, the Indian pairing reached the semifinals before going down to the Eltingh-Haarhuis combine 6-2, 6-7(4), 7-5.

Paes and Bhupathi then moved to Rome, Italy, for the $2,450,000 Campionati Internazionali d'Italia TIM Cup (better known, quite simply, as the Italian Open and, for purposes of computation of points, ranked as a Super 9 category tournament).

Seeded second behind the Woodies and playing on their least favoured surface, clay, the Indian duo blazed through a strong field to defeat the fourth seeded Ellis Ferreira and Rick Leach, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6(5).

That is pretty much the factfile for the ace Indian pair for the year.

If it were merely a simple matter of points scored, Paes and Bhupathi would be number one right now.

As per the standings on May 25, Paes and Bhupathi were ranked just below Mark Woodforde and Todd Woodbridge, at number two. The Woodies had 1805 points at that stage, compared to Paes and Bhupathi with 1634.

The points system in Grand Slams is simple: getting into the round of 64 earns you 20 points, one step beyond, into the round of 32, earns you 41, go further into the round of 16 and you get 82 points, a quarterfinal is worth 163, the semifinal counts for 325, being a finalist gets you 537, winning the final gets you a whopping 750 points.

The Woodies lost in the round of 16, which gave them 82 points taking their tally to 1887.

By entering the semis, Paes and Bhupathi won 325 points, which takes their own tally to 1959.

No argument there, the Indian aces easily above their Australian rivals. Interestingly, when the two first teamed up and began winning, they defined their goal unambiguously. "We want to dethrone the Woodies," Leander Paes said, just before the year-ending World Doubles Championships in Hartford.

At this point, they would have appeared to have accomplished precisely that -- if, that is, the ATP hadn't thrown a spanner into the works, in the form of a new ranking system introduced at the start of the ongoing season.

Where, earlier, it was a simple matter of calculating points per tournament and ranking according to the aggregate, the ATP this year introduced a complicated system.

As per this, the points themselves have three aspects. First, a player earns points from the tournaments he has entered. Namely, tournament points.

Secondly, a player earns bonus points for each player he defeats.

Crucially, only the best 14 results from the past 52 weeks count towards the player's ATP Tour Ranking.

A bit of explanation might be needed to put each of the three aspects in perspective. First, the amount of points a player earns at a tournament depends on the classification of the tournament and, secondly, on the total financial commitment of a tournament, and of course how far a player progresses in it.

For this purpose, tournaments have been classified as follows in order of importance in terms of points: Challengers (100), World Series Tournaments (250), Championship Series Tournaments (320), Mercedes Super 9 Tournaments (400) and Grand Slams (760).

Note that the figures in brackets are the highest points a player can earn for winning the tournament.

Then there are the bonus points, which you earn depending on the ATP Tour Ranking of the player he defeats. For instance, a win over the world number one ranked player or, in the case of doubles, team earns the winner 50 points by way of bonus. Wins over players ranked 2-5 gets you 45 bonus points, numbers 6-10 gets you 36 bonus points, and so on, all the way to numbers 151 to 200, which is worth one bonus point.

Walkovers do not qualify for bonus points. However, a player who starts the game, then abandons for any reason conceedes bonus points to his opponent. In Super 9 tournaments, which are over five sets, win you double.

Interestingly, the bonus points on offer explain just why Paes and Bhupathi seem more than ordinarily motivated when they play a higher-ranked team (not that there are many of those around today).

At the end of the tournament, the player or team has the points scored tallied, with bonus points tagged on.

Which brings up the final stage in the ranking process: the best 14 of these points totals over the last 52 weeks are then added together to get the total points, and it is on the basis of this that his ATP Tour Ranking is decided.

It is this last that has thrown the number one spot into a spot of bother -- at the end of the French Open, the ATP calculators thus will be hard at work, computing the points of the Woodies, and the Indian pair, over the past year to determine who tops the tennis world.

Funny thing is, even by this yardstick, Paes and Bhupathi could well take the top slot -- it was in the middle of last year that they, after a poor start to their partnership, hit the hottest winning streak in recent memory.

At this year's French Open, the third-ranked Indian pair started off with a win over the American duo Dave Randall and Greg Van Emburgh (6-7, 6-3-, 6-3), then followed it up with fine wins over Neville Godwin of South Africa and Tuomas Ketola of Finland (6-3, 7-6); then a third round win over the Swedish pair of Fredrik Bergh and Peter Nyborg 6-4, 7-6; a quarter final win over Julian Alonso of Spain and Nicolas Lapentti of Eucador 6-3, 6-4, to move into the semis.

The two Indians however didn't do quite as well in the mixed doubles category. Paes, seeded first at the French Open in tandem with Larissa Neiland of Latvia, lost to the unseeded Serena Williams-Luis Lobo pairing in the second round, 7-6, 6-3.

Bhupathi, the defending champion in tandem with Japanese star Rika Hiraki, meanwhile changed partners and teamed up with Australian Rennae Stubbs. The Bhupathi-Stubbs combo, seeded third here, lost the second round encounter with Anne Gaelle Sidot and Sebastian Grosjean of France, 4-6, 4-6.