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Paes gets wild card for Dubai tourney

Indian tennis ace Leander Paes will face Fernando Vicente of Spain in the first round of the men's singles in the Dubai Duty Free Open tournament later today. He has been given a wild card.

His draw till the semi-finals is:

7 Hicham Arazi      vs   Rainer Schuttler  \
  Jiri Novak        vs Q Qualifier         / \ __ SF
  Fernando Vicente  vs   Leander Paes      \ /
2 Magnus Norman     vs   Karim Alami       /

Fernando Vicente is a lean 5'11" clay court player who started playing last year. He was 3-7 in the hardcourt season, before going on a good run on clay courts, winning the title at Merano (clay) and finishing runner-up in two more clay events (Casablanca and Kitzbuhel). He has a 19-16 record on clay, but only a 4-11 record on hardcourts, though most of those losses were against top-50 players. This year he lost to Vacek and Rosset in Doha and Auckland, but then beat Berasategui and Todd Martin at the Australian Open before losing to Arazi.

Nicolas Lapentti of Ecuador will be Paes's partners for the doubles. Paes had to change his doubles partner as Wayne Black is not playing doubles at the Dubai tournament because of fatigue, having played three long matches in the tough 2-3 loss to the United States in the Davis Cup.

Paes/Lapentti will be unseeded as Lapentti is ranked #121 in the individual doubles rankings. Lapentti is a good doubles player and was Gustavo Kuerten's partner last year when. Together they won the Adelaide title and then reached the quarter-finals at the Australian Open.

Lapentti has three tour doubles titles under his name. Though he didn't have a good doubles year in 1999, it was really his breakthrough year when he finished the year ranking 8th, coming up from 92 at the end of 1998.

Paes/Lapentti will face the third seeds Novak/ Rikl of the Czech Republic in the first round.

Here is the draw for Paes/Lapentti till the final round:

1 B.Black/ J.Tarango  vs   A.Kitinov/ D.Vacek   \
  J.Eagle/ A.Florent  vs W F.Mantilla/ A.Martin / \ __ F
3 J.Novak/ D.Rikl     vs   N.Lapentti/ L.Paes   \ /
  A.Pavel/ T.VanHoudt vs   D.Johnson/ P.Norval  /