By IANS,
New Delhi : India’s Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi saved one match point before cruising to the Sony Ericsson Open doubles final with a 6-3, 5-7, 11-9 victory over Oliver Marach of Austria and Serb Janko Tipsarevic.
The third-seeded Indian pair was leading 6-3, 2-0, before Marach and Tipsarevic came back to make it a set all. The Austrian-Serbian pair held a match point at 9-8 in the tie-break but then lost the final three points to bow out.
“We let our lead slide,” admitted Bhupathi. “It got tight, down match point, but Leander and I have been in the situation before and continued to work for each point.”
Paes, who won this event last year with Czech Lukas Dlouhy, is confident going into the final.
“I just want to keep having fun, enjoy myself out there,” Paes said. “We’ve had some good results this year, so if we keep playing like we have been all year, we should be fine
They next plays second seeds seeds Max Mirnyi of Belarus and Daniel Nestor of Canada, who defeated fourth seeded Jurgen Melzer and Philipp Petzschner 6-4, 6-1 in the semi-finals.