Paes-Damm survive to play third round at Wimbledon

London, June 30 (UNI) Fifth seed Leander Paes and his Czech partner Martin Damm made heavy weather of their match against James Auckland and Stephen Huss in a marathon three and half hour encounter to make their way into the third round of Wimbledon here.

The Indo-Czech combo was forced to draw deep into their resources before overcoming the British-Australian pair 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 7-6.

The unseeded duo of Auckland-Huss caught the higher ranked opponents off gurad, stretching them thorughout the four sets to finally bow out.

There was not much that separated the two pairs on court no.17 at the All England Lawn Tennis Association but higher number of unforced errors and double faults helped Paes and Damm survive a scare.

Giving a good account of themselves, the British-Australian duo had a real chance of upsetting the more fancied rivals but 19 unforced errors and double faults compared to 12 and two by Paes-Damm dashed their chances of progressing into the third round.

In fact, Paes and Damm made it harder for themselves, failing to convert even a single break point out of the 10 they received while their rivals converted one out of the two they received.

The fifth seeded pair had breezed into the second round with a 7-6(7-4), 6-3, 7-5 victory over South African Chris Haggard and Marcin Matkowski of Poland.

UNI