By IANS,
New Haven (Connecticut) : An error-prone Mahesh Bhupathi and his Bahamas partner Mark Knowles went down in straight sets to Brazilian Marcelo Melo and Andre Sa in the doubles final of $708,000 Pilot Pen Tennis tournament here.
Bhupathi-Knowles, seeded second, double faulted seven times and were broken four times in their 5-7, 2-6 defeat to fourth seeded Brazilians in one hour and 22-minutes here Saturday.
Melo and Sa broke early in the first set to gain a 2-0 lead but were broken back in the very next game. Both the pairs held their serves thereon before Knowles double-faulted at a critical point to hand over the first set to the Brazilians.
Melo-Sa raced to a 4-2 lead in the second set before wrapping up the set and the match.
The Brazilians who faced second round exit from the Indians Leander Paes and Bhupathi at the Beijing Olympics didn’t drop a set throughout the tournament.
“The time change was really tough, we were waking up at 5 a.m. every day and we tried to stay up,” said Sa. “We had a good run, our first few matches we played very well and got confidence. We just played hard and came out with the title and we feel really good.”
Bhupathi had last year won the New Haven title with Serbian Nenad Zimonjic.