Paes-Dlouhy beat top seeds

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Paris: Leander Paes and his Czech partner Lukas Dlouhy stunned the top-seeded Canadian-Serbian pair of Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic in straight sets to enter the men’s doubles final of the French Open on Thursday.

The third-seeded Indo-Czech combination took one hour and 48 minutes to down their fancied rivals 7-6 (4) 7-6 (5) in their semi-final. This will be Paes’s third appearance in the final of the claycourt Slam after wins in 1999 and 2001 with Mahesh Bhupathi.

Nestor, 36, and Zimonjic, 32, had been all but unbeatable on clay recently, winning titles at Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Rome and Madrid over the past two months. “It s been a great clay season,” said Nestor. “But this was a great opportunity to win a Slam and unfortunately we didn’t. The way that it ends is usually the way you remember the season. Hopefully it will be better on the grass.”

Nestor and Zimonjic both saved a pair of match points — Nestor’s coming in the 10th game on a pair of huge service winners. Zimonjic’s came two games later, the second on a Nestor cross-court winner which sent the match into a second tiebreaker.

Dlouhy and Paes, beaten in five previous matches by the duo, made the most of their opportunity in the tiebreak, taking a 3-1 lead and forcing Nestor to save his third match point of a long afternoon with another booming serve. The match ended one point later as Dlouhy served out the one-hour 48-minute victory. “They played well, they were consistent and that was enough to win today,” Nestor said.