Rohan Bopanna and Aisam Qureshi took their winning form from the Challengers to the ATP as they stormed into the final of the Kingfisher Airlines Open tennis tournament in Mumbai on Saturday.
The Indo-Pak duo, who had won four straight Challengers this summer, put on a sizzling performance beat Germany's [Images] Lars Burgsmuller and Olivier Rochus of Belgium 6-2, 6-3 in the semi-finals.
"It was not easy as it looked," offered Bopanna. "We served extremely well, we returned very well also. I think we did well in every aspect of the game."
The pair served 10 aces in the match and were fantastic on the return, especially against Rochus. The Belgian, who had won a tiring semi-final against Rainer Schuettler earlier in the day, was off-colour in the doubles and was broken thrice, winning only six points on serve.
"We tried to return well on Lars' serve also but he was a little better. We hit two return winners in Rochus' first service game and kind of carried the momentum from there," said Bopanna.
"Mahesh Bhupathi [Images] had played against Rochus before and he passed on a few tips," said Qureshi. "He said that if we put pressure on Rochus' serve he would go on the back foot, and we were prepared for that."
Qureshi will play his first ATP final, while it's the third title race for Bopanna.
The Indian had made it to the final in Chennai and Mumbai last year.
"It's great to be in the final and defend all points from last year. Every match at this level is tough but if we play the way we did today we'll do well," said Bopanna, who hopes to be third time lucky in the final.
They will meet third seeds Jarkko Nieminen of Finland and Robert Lindstedt in the championship round. The Scandinavian pair beat Boris Pashanski and Viktor Troicki of Serbia 6-1, 7-5 in the earlier semi-final.
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