2010 BNP Paribas Masters: Monday Doubles Review
Eight teams battled it out on the courts at Bercy to win one of the remaining spots for themselves in the second round. Eight of the sixteen spots have already been filled by the top seeded teams who received byes into the second
round. All the teams that moved into the second round today scraped tight wins over their opponents. With all the matches being three-setters, the matches were decided on tiebreakers.
Court 2 saw two doubles matches today. Doubles play for the day kicked off with a match between the team of Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky and Russian legend Mikhail Youzhny and the team of Swede Simon Aspelin and Aussie Paul Hanley.
Although Stakhovsky and Youzhny are talented professionals, having proven themselves in singles matches, they never had much luck when it came to doubles. They only hold one title in this season as opposed to their opponents who hold two titles and are runners-up
at one ATP event this year. Despite these odds, Stakhovsky and Youzhny got off to a strong start, winning their first round match and joining the seeds in the next round. Stakhovsky / Youzhny won the first set 6-3, only to have the Swede-Aussie duo reverse
the score in the second set. As the match entered the tiebreaker, Aspelin and Hanley tried to keep up, but ultimately lost to the central Asians by 10-4. Youzhny and Stakhovsky move into the second round with a score of 6-3, 3-6, 10-4. They will next face
the eighth seeded Czech Slovakian duo, Frantisek Cermak and Michal Mertinak.
Two countries took to the court next when the American team of John Isner and Sam Querrey faced the Brazilian pair, Thomaz Bellucci and Marcelo Melo. The Americans managed an “interesting” win over their opponents. As the first
set entered the tiebreaker Isner and Querrey served brilliantly to win the set at 7-6(5). The Americans put up a good fight but lost the second set 4-6 to the Brazilians, taking the match into tiebreaker. The Americans did not lose a single point in the tiebreaker,
winning it by a landslide at 10-0. They go on to face the celebrated pair of Indian Leander Paes and Czech Lukas Dlouhy.
The only doubles match played in the centre court was between the Croats, Marin Cilic and Ivan Ljubicic and the Kazakh-Uzbek duo, Andrey Golubev and Denis Istomin. In a three- setter clash that lasted for an hour and twenty-four
minutes, the Croats won the first set 6-3, but lost the second in tiebreaker at (3)6-7. In the tiebreaker that followed the two teams went at it neck to neck desperately trying to get an edge over their opponents. For twenty points neither teams caught a break,
but then at 10-10 the Croats managed two successive points to win the tiebreaker at 12-10. Cilic and Ljubicic move into the second round to face the top seeded team of the Bryans, Bob and Mike from the United States.
The last team to move into the second round on Monday was that of Spaniards Nicolas Almagro and David Marrero. The Spaniards moved past the Germans, Christopher Kas and Philipp Kohlschreiber in seventy-six minutes to secure a spot
for themselves in the second round where they face the Polish-Austrian duo, Lukasz Kubot and Oliver Marach. Their match score against the Germans was 6-4, 5-7, 10-8.
With these four teams making it into the second round, four spots are still to be filled.
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