By IANS
New Delhi : India’s Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles of Bahamas moved into the finals of the Sony Ericsson Open at Miami, Florida registering a thrilling win against the Czech pair of Martin Damm and Pavel Vizner.
The Bhupathi-Knowles duo, seeded fourth, saved three match points Thursday night before prevailing over the sixth seed Czech pair 7-6 (5), 4-6, 11-9 in the one hour 50 minutes long semi-final battle. With this win the Indo-Bahamas pair also registered their fourth consecutive match tiebreak victory.
They will now face defending champion and top seeds Bob and Mike Bryan of the US in the finals. The Bryan brothers stormed into their third consecutive final here, thrashing unseeded South African duo of Jeff Coetzee and Wesley Moodie 6-1, 6-4.
Knowles, who made his fourth final appearance here, had earlier won the title in 2002 with Daniel Nestor, while his partner Bhupathi has never passed the quarterfinals hurdle in his previous eight appearances.
Bhupathi and Knowles had so far won 14 out of their last 15 matches this season. The duo won back-to-back titles in Memphis and Dubai without dropping a set before Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram, the eventual champions, stopped their 10-match winning streak in the quarterfinals of Indian Wells Masters.