NEWS

Damm & Paes Stun Defending Champions

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Martin Damm and Leander Paes shrugged off their indifferent form leading into Tennis Masters Cup Shanghai with a 6-4, 6-1 win over defending champions Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi on Day 1 in Shanghai Sunday. Damm and Paes had endured opening-round losses in their two most recent outings - ATP Masters Series events in Paris and Madrid coming into the circuit finale.

But the 2006 US Open champions looked sharp from the start, earning a break point on Bjorkman's serve in the third game and then breaking the veteran Swede's next service game. The duo then took Mirnyi's serve in the first and fifth games of the second set, and broke Bjorkman in the final game of the match.

Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram saved one match point in a dramatic 7-6(1_, 3-6, 14-12 (Match TB) win over second seeds Paul Hanley and Kevin Ullyett. The Israelis, who came into the Masters Cup after the withdrawal of injured top-seeded team Bob and Mike Bryan, needed four match points in a nerve-wracking Match TB to close out the match.

Hanley and Ullyett clawed back from 3-6 to lead 8-6 on serve. Ullyett served an ace wide to the forehand to seemingly set up three match points for his team. But Erlich challenged the call and the electronic review showed it indeed was a fault. Erlich hit a forehand return down the line for a winner to draw level at 8-8. The Israelis fought off the one match point they faced (on serve) at 9-10 and clinched the match on their fourth match point when Ullyett popped a forehand volley long after a quick exchange at net.

DAY 2 PREVIEW
On Monday, Mark Knowles of the Bahamas and Daniel Nestor of Canada, who reached the Tennis Masters Cup final in 2006, will take on the French team of Arnaud Clement and Michael Llodra. The Clement and Llodra duo could certainly have mileage from the fact that Llodra is a Tennis Masters Cup past champion - he won the 2005 TMC title with countryman Fabrice Santoro. It also won't hurt that Clement and Llodra hold a 3-0 career advantage over Knowles and Nestor.

Knowles and Nestor have not played together since ending their long-standing partnership after the US Open, but neither player expects any difficulty this week. "Coming back together again should be pretty easy considering that we played together for 10 or 12 years," Nestor said. "We are practising well and we're the top team here, so we'd like to go out with a win."

Nestor said: "It's exciting. This is what we set out for at the beginning of the year and it's nice to be here. I'm sure it won't be a problem to play together - we know each other well and we look forward to playing some good tennis."

The other doubles match on the schedule features Simon Aspelin of Sweden and Julian Knowle of Austria against the Czech duo of Lukas Dlouhy and Pavel Vizner. Playing together for the first time this year, Aspelin and Knowle are tied at 1-1 with Dlouhy and Vizner in career meetings. Interestingly, both of those meetings took place at the grand slams this year - Dlouhy and Vizner won their round-of-16 outing at Roland Garros; Aspelin and Knowle won their meeting in the U.S. Open final.