Bhupathi-Tarango lose in final

Shailesh Soni

Indian doubles ace Mahesh Bhupathi and Jeff Tarango of the United States lost in the doubles final of the $100,000 Kremlin Cup, in Moscow.

The Indo-American pair, unseeded in the tournament, lost to the fourth seeded pair of Max Mirnyi of Belarus and Sandon Stolle of Australia 3-6, 0-6 in the final on Sunday.

Earlier on Saturday, Bhupathi and Tarango defeated the the second seeded Czech pair of Jiri Novak and Rikl David 6-3, 6-4 in the semi-finals.

The final was almost a no-contest and took only 43 minutes. Bhupathi/Tarango fell behind early and could not make a comeback in the first set.

In the second set, Mirnyi and Stolle were on a tear as they put pressure on service with some great returns. Though Bhupathi/Tarango had 60 per cent of the serves in, a lot of those first serves did not result in points. In fact, other than once at 40-30 in the fifth game on Bhupathi's serve, the Indo-American pair did not even have any game points in the second set.

There was a customary scene from Tarango after the first game of the second set, on a disputed line-call. He had some words with the chair umpire and sat down throwing a ball in disgust after they lost that game on their serve after Bhupathi had served well twice to save two of the three break-points from 0-40.

Despite the loss in the final, Bhupathi collected 175 precious points, as 250 points from the title at Tokyo last year with Paes will be going off the list.

It was fifth final for Mahesh in company of another player; he has won only one title at St.Poelten, Austria, last year with Andrew Kratzmann as his partner from the five finals.

Earlier report:
Bhupathi-Tarango in semis