Its great to see so much following for a relatively lesser known tournament. I was fortunate enough to be at the stadium along with my wife, cheering Leander Paes and Thomas Damm. So I thought I'd give my first hand experience to all those who might be interested. For the record, official score was 6-2,6-7(7-5),12-10. Prize money is $5mn plus. The women's semi-final in the main stadium went on for more than 2 hours and hence they had to move the Paes-Damm men's doubles semi-final to a smaller court in Stadium 3. It was scorching hot at Indian Wells with temperatures soaring to 100F.
Paes-Damm took the first set easily helped by the unforced errors of their top-seeded opponents. Second set was tougher and the score went to 6 games each. Paes-Damm should have won 7-2 but with their mistakes lost the tie-breaker 7-5. There was no third set but another tie-break for 10 points. So the third 'set' was won 11-9 by Paes-Damm.
I was surprised that an ATP tournament had such rules where a proper third set was replaced by a 10 point tie-break - that too at the semi-final level. Anyway the best part was to see Leander win. We cheered him all along (having taken pictures with him during his practice session). Surprisingly lot of Americans also supported Paes-Damm - thoroughly enjoying the trademark chest bumps (yes.. he continues doing it even after his break-up with Bhupathi).
Overall we had great fun. Wish we had more sports heroes from Mera Bharat Mahaan !!
RE:First hand info :-)
by sunilkumar mishra on Mar 18, 2007 02:17 PM Permalink
Congrats for enjooying the match and chheering Paes and Damn. All Indians r now preoccupied with cricket loss to B'desh but if a few indivduals have done the country proud with their talents, skill and dedication, they r Leander, Bhupathi, Vishy Anand and not these bunch of cricket demiGods. All the best to Paes for the finals. sukalp HYD
RE:First hand info :-)
by ShreeRam Somani on Mar 18, 2007 07:02 PM Permalink
Gosh.. they should sack the reporte and use you instead. I get more info and clear info from what you have written than the supposedly reporter. MR/MS EDITOR are you reading this?????
