Bhupathi-Knowles enter Montreal Masters final

Montreal: Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles advanced to their 10th ATP World Tour doubles final, beating defending champions Daniel Nestor of Canada and Serbia's Nenad Zimonjic in a keenly-contested semi-final match of the USD three million Rogers Cup here.

The third seeded Indo-Bahamian pair had to play out of their skin to beat second seeds Nestor and Zimonjic 5-7, 6-2, 10-4 in a match tie-break late last night.

Bhupathi and Knowles will take on seventh-seeded Max Mirnyi of Belarus and Israeli Andy Ram in the final of the hard-court tournament.

Mirnyi and Ram upset top seeds Bob and Mike Bryan of the US 7-6(5), 6-2 in another last four match.

There was nothing much to differentiate between the Bhupathi-Knowles pair and their opponents, except for the fact that the Indo-Bahamian duo won 72 per cent of their service points, including seven aces, to register their 26th win in as many as 40 matches on the World Tour this year.

The key to Bhupathi-Knowles duo's victory was that their opponents could land only 53 percent of their first serves in.

With this victory over Nestor and Zimonjic, Bhupathi and Knowles have avenged their final defeat at the Barcelona Open and their semi-final loss at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome during the clay-court season earlier this year.

The defeat will also see Nestor and Zimonjic slip to the No 2 position from the top spot in the new world rankings which will be released tomorrow, while the Bryan Brothers will be back at the top despite their semifinal loss.

The 35-year-old Bhupathi is a four-time former champion at the Rogers Cup, having lifted the doubles trophy in 1997 with compatriot Leander Paes, 2003 with Mirnyi, 2004 again with Paes and 2007 with Pavel Vizner of Czech Republic.

However, Bhupathi's partner Knowles, 37, captured the title only once and that too way back in 1993 along with American Jim Courier.