Bhupathi-Knowles end runners-ups at Barcelona Open

Barcelona:

Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles faltered at the final hurdle and had to be content with the runners-up title at the Barcelona Open following their defeat to the reigning ATP World Tour Champions Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic on Sunday.

Bidding for their first title in six months, the fourth seeded Indo-Bahamian pair lost 3-6, 6-7(9-11) to the Canadian-Serbian pair, also the number two seeds, in one hour and 33 minutes.

Bhupathi and Knowles were playing their second summit clash of the season after ending runners-up at Australian Open to Bryan brothers, whom they defeated in the semi-finals here.

Since reaching the championship match in Melbourne, Bhupathi and Knowles had won just two matches in four tournaments and suffered opening round exits in their past two outings at ATP Masters Series events at Miami and Monte-Carlo.

They last won an ATP event in October 2008 when they triumphed in the International series tournament in Basel against German pair of Christopher Kas and Philipp Kohlschreiber.

They got 300 ranking points and split euro 39,000 as prize money by virtue of their final match appearance.