Paes-Dlouhy bow out of Barcelona Open

Leander Paes and Lukas Dlouhy made a shock second round exit from the euro 1,995,000 ATP Barcelona Open after losing a hard-fought match to Simon Aspelin of Sweden and Wesley Moodie of South Africa.

The third-seeded Indo-Czech pair lost 6-7(5), 6-7(3) to their unseeded opponents after an one hour and 41 minutes.

Paes and Dlouhy did extremely well to save two break-points in the first set but eventually lost in the tie-breaker.

In the second set too they saved three break-points out of four and broke their rivals once but surrendered in the tie-breaker and crash out of the tournament.

Meanwhile, Harsh Mankad and his partner Martin Fischer overcame a second set lapse in the first round to reach the doubles quarter-finals of the US $50,000 ATP Challenger event in Tallahassee, United States.

The fourth-seeded Indo-Austrian pair edged past Canadian qualifiers Frederic Niemeyer and Vasek Pospisil 6-4, 1-6, 10-8.

In singles, Prakash Amritraj has already reached the second round but Somdev Devvarman exited after a first round defeat.