Last year, he had a dream run in this tournament entering the quarterfinals, beating world number one Pete Sampras on the way for the greatest ever win of his singles career.

Paes, who has not won a singles match after losing in the quarterfinals of the Hall of Fame at Newport soon after Wimbledon, is having a terrible time in singles. In his bid to consolidate his number one ranking in doubles, he has been playing with different partners from Jan Siemerink to Jonas Bjorkman and Jared Palmer with disappointing results.

This week, he is partnering Frenchman Oliver Delaitre who is without his regular partner Fabrice Santoro in this tournament. Theyare the top-seeds and have a first round bye. They may even run into Mahesh Bhupathi and Andrei Pavel in the second round.

Bhupathi, who pulled out of the first round singles qualifying against Prahlad Srinath after aggravating the abdomin injury, initially wanted to skip doubles following medical advice. This forced Paes to sign in with Delaitre. But Bhupathi, deciding later that he needs practice, teamed-up with Pavel, ranked 152. Hopefully, it is nothing more than a timing factor.

Srinath, meanwhile, lost to 51st ranked Arnaud di Pasquale in the final round qualifying 3-6, 2-6.

In the women's, Nirupama Vaidyanathan, lost in the final round of Bronx Challengers to Julia Abe, ranked 141, the top-seed in qualifying. She upset Irina Selyutina of Kazakhstan, ranked 186, 6-2 7-6(4) in the first round. Syed Fazaluddin also lost in the final round of the men's qualifying in the Bronx Challenger.