Paes and Bhupathi will be fighting each other for an ATP Challenger doubles crown at the BMW championship.

By Bhagya Ayyavoo

What does a top doubles team do when their pride is dented? They go back to the drawing board and play some hard tennis once again. Two of the world’s most dreaded teams are doing just that.
 
After their first-round exit at the high-profile BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, an ATP World Tour 100 tournament, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have decided to play the US Challenger circuit, a category normally skipped by world stars.

The top-flight doubles players, who are usually seen at the Grand Slams, ATP 1000 and 500 series, are the top two seeds at the BMW championship at the Sunrise Tennis Club in Florida this week.

The Florida Challenger event is boasting of the most impressive field in its seven-year history with Paes and Bhupathi drawn in either half of the draw with their respective partners.

Paes and his usual partner Lukas Dlouhy are the top seeds and face a stiff challenge in Rik de Voest of South Africa and Rogier Wassen of The Netherlands in the opening round, while Bhupathi and Max Mirnyi, seeded second may find the ideal match practice that they have been denied so far (after three first-round exits in four events) against a tough opposition in Martin Damn and Filip Polasek.

Couple of days ago, the fourth-seeded Bhupathi-Mirnyi duo continued its first-round losing streak as it went down to unknown Igor Andreev and Evgeny Korolev 6-4 6-4 on March 13. Third-seeded Paes and Dlouhy followed the Indo-Belarusian duo a day later, losing to Marc Lopez and Rafael Nadal 6-4 3-6 10-6. Both the pairs failed to bag ranking points, but spilt $6980 each for competing in the $3,645,000 hard court event.

A look at the stats ahead of their new campaign reveals Paes and Bhupathi haven’t played at the Challenger level in a long time.

Paes, who has won 42 ATP titles in his 19-year-old career, last featured at the Prostejov Challenger tournament in the Czech Republic way back in June 2004. Paes and his then Czech mate, David Rikl, bowed out in the last-four stage on that occasion.

At the other end, Bhupathi must have forgotten what it is to play at this level. The 35-year-old, who has 45 ATP titles to his name, was last seen at the Bangkok Challenger event with Thai player Wittaya Samrej, over eight years ago in December 2001. It wasn’t a memorable outing as they lost in the round of 16.

A good 125 points are up for grabs for the winner at the week-long Sunrise event that ends on March 21. It will be a handy one if the Indians can go all the way.