Bofors Bopanna guns down Paes

Leander Paes has been looking for long for someone to pass on the baton to.

Though his highest singles ranking of 73 may take a long time to overhaul, Rohan Bopanna made the first inroad to breaking the Lee-Hesh monopoly in doubles by knocking over his Davis Cup captain in the second round of the Australian Open.

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Bopanna, who broke into the top-100 last year after a string of impressive performances in challenger events , combined with American Rajeev Ram to beat fifth seeds, Paes and his Australian partner Paul Hanley 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (6) and advance to the pre-quarters of the year's opening Grand Slam.

"Firstly, it's great to reach the third round in a Grand Slam," an excited Bopanna told rediff.com from Melbourne on Sunday. "And then to beat experienced players like Paes and Hanley."

While the 27-year-old Bopanna had the best year of his career in 2007, Ram, an American player of Indian origin, has made a good start this year, qualifying for the singles draw at the Chennai Open and making it to the doubles semi-final along with Harel Levy of Israel.

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It wasn't easy for the first time pairing of Bopanna-Ram though. They had to fight back from being a match-point down in the third set tie-breaker to pull off the upset.

"We were down a match point at 5-6 on my serve. I got the first serve in and Rajeev hit two good volleys. Though both of us serve big, there weren't too many aces in the match, we were trying to play the percentages."

Their match was delayed to Sunday as the outside courts matches were rained off on Saturday.

"It was frustrating waiting for the match," recalls Bopanna. "We were playing first on court so we just had to wait for first the courts to dry and then just when we were getting ready to play it started raining again."

Bopanna-Ram, who beat Briton James Auckland and American Sam Querrey in the first round to record their first Grand Slam win, set up pre-quarterfinal clash against South African pair of Jeff Coetzee and Wesley Moodie.

Bopanna has lost to Moodie thrice in singles in ATP and Challengers and lost to the South African in two consecutive doubles finals, in Kuala Lumpur and New Delhi, in November last year. But the Indian, in company of the in-form Ram, is confident of doing well against Moodie-Coetzee.

"I have lost to Moodie a few times in singles, but I have also beaten Coetzee. We are playing some great doubles and are really looking forward to it."

Mahesh Bhupathi and Bahamas' Mark Knowles eased through with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over Swiss Yves Allegro and Belgian Kristof Vliegen. The sixth seeds will next meet the Polish duo Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski.