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Leander, Lareau to pair up for Australian Open doubles

Leander Paes of India and Sebastien Lareau of Canada will the top seed pair in the doubles at the Australian Open 2000.

Leander Paes, who is world number 1 in the individual doubles ranking, will be pairing with the Canadian world number 4 Lareau in absence of his regular partner and world number 2 Mahesh Bhupathi, who is nursing a shoulder injury.

Paes and Lareau, placed in the upper quarter of the draw, will face the unseeded American pair of Geoff Grant and Jack Waite.

The other seeded teams in the upper quarter are the 16th seeded pair of David MacPherson of Australia and Peter Nyborg of Sweden, the 10th seeded pair of Piet Norval of South Africa and Kevin Ullyett of Zimbabwe and eighth seeded pair of Wayne Black of Zimbabwe and Andrew Kratzmann of Australia.

The seeds in the bottom quartile of the upper half are fourth seeded pair of O'Brien/Palmer and the sixth seeded Adams/DeJager.

In the bottom half, the potential quarterfinal clashes are between the fifth seeded Ferreira/Leach against the third seeded Bjorkman/Black, and seventh seeded Tarango/Vacek against second seeded Woodbridge/Woodforde.

Pat Rafter, who was supposed to play just doubles, decided to withdraw from the doubles. Rafter has won the 1999 doubles title along with Swede Jonas Bjorkman. His partner Wayne Arthurs will now play with Juan Balcells.

There are not many interesting unseeded teams in the whole draw who could prove to be the dark horses. Josh Eagle and Andrew Florent are back together, but are unseeded. They could probably get back to their old tricks. Kafelnikov is playing with Wayne Ferreira and they're seeded 15th. Martin Damm is playing with Max Mirnyi and are seeded 14th.

But the Woodies have already sounded some early warnings. They have gone on an eight-match win streak to start the year 2000, with back-to-back titles at Adelaide and Sydney. The doubles draws were on the weaker side at both tournaments, but nobody should write off these legends just yet.