Indian duo Leander Paes, Purav Raja sails into finals of Knoxville Challenger

Knoxville, November 13: The top-seeded India duo Leander Paes and Purav Raja on Saturday defeated third seeds Ruan Roelofse of South Africa and Joe Salisbury of Britain in the doubles semifinals and marched into the finals of the Knoxville Challenger which is being held in Knoxville, United States.

 

The Indian duo registered an emphatic victory over Ruan Roelofse of South Africa and Joe Salisbury of Britain by 7-6(4), 6-3 in an exciting match that lasted for an hour. The Indian pair will clash for the title with the winners of other semifinals. In the other semi-finals, a Venezuelan and British pair of R. Maytin and C. Norrie will face the American and Australia duo J. Cerretani and J. Smith.

The Indian pair of Leander Paes and Purav Raja combine needed a tie-breaker to win the opening set but a single break in the 2nd set was enough to book their berth in the summit clash. Paes and Raja had been struggling ever since joining forces at the Winston-Salem Open right before the US Open. Their best performance has so far been a semi-final appearance at the ATP 250 St Petersburg Open in September out of the seven tournaments that they played together.

On the other side, Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan and Christopher Rungkat of Indonesia lost 10-8 in the super tie-break to the unseeded Japanese pair of Ben Mclachlan and Yasutaka Uchiyama in the final. Earlier in the semifinals round, Nedunchezhiyan and Rungkat defeated Alex Bolt and Bradley Mousley.