For all we know Gael Monfils and Gilles Simon harbour an intense dislike of each other. It may just be that a language barrier kept us from realising that in the course of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi’s first round doubles match in Beijing on Tuesday.

For instance, when Paes volleyed Bhupathi and himself to a break for a 4-3 lead in the second set, the two French twenty-somethings may have been resolving to hold separate press conferences announcing they would not play as a doubles pair ever again.

And when Monfils mis-hit his return in the very next game, and chanted “la-la-la-la-la”, it may have been the last straw for Monsieur Simon. His patience may just have worn thin enough for him to seethe at his partner’s under-performance.

In actual fact, the two Frenchmen kept up quite a cheerful game against the obviously better doubles pair. At the Olympic Green Tennis Centre, where an air of festivity blew with the cool evening breeze, with spectators threading their way in and out of matches, Paes and Bhupathi came to the tie seeded seventh. They were expected to win, and they did.

But it will be their burden, a consequence of their actions and words, that excessive meaning will be read into every interaction, every glance that passes between them.

And during the 57-minute match (6-3, 6-3), it was just too easy to perceive inordinate intensity into their game. The match was clearly theirs from the start, the Frenchmen just too unable to cope, especially against Paes’s volleys and Bhupathi’s aggression. The real action was always confined to India’s side of the net.

... contd.