Top seeds Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles perhaps hadn’t bargained for the kind of challenge they would be up against as they took on Prakash Amritraj and Somdev Devvarman. The wild cards took the game to their established opponents, stretching them all the way, but the favourites won this one in two tie-breaks, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (8).

Second seeds Leander Paes and Lukas Dlouhy, though, had no such happy ending in their first-round match against Germans Bjorn Phau and Rainer Schuettler. The Indian and his Czech partner won the first set, but couldn’t keep the momentum their way, going down in the super tie-break, 4-6, 6-2, 10-7.

There were a few contentious decisions that didn’t go down well with Paes, but arguments with the chair umpire didn’t change the outcome of the match.

Forgettable start to season

“It’s a bad start to the season, and it hurts much more because it’s at home. But I feel we let ourselves down today. We lost concentration, tried to do too much. Of course, they played well too,” said Paes. “We completely threw it away today. The line calls were clearly wrong, but that’s sport, and we didn’t lose only because of a couple of bad decisions,” he added.

Americans Eric Butorac and Rajeev Ram defeated Rogier Wassen of the Netherlands and Croat Lovro Zovko 6-2, 6-3 and Jean-Claude Scherrer and Stanislas Wawrinka of Switzerland beat Yvez Allegro, also of Switzerland, and Romanian Horia Tecau 7-6, 6-4.

The American pair of Scott Lipsky and David Martin beat the Austrian-Serbian duo of Olivier Marach and Janko Tipsarevic 6-7, 7-5, 10-8.