London: Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles enhanced their semi-final chances at the ATP World Tour finals after edging past Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski in a tough group B encounter in London on Tuesday.
The third seed Indo-Bahamian pair overcame a first set lapse to beat the eighth seeded Polish pair 3-6, 6-3, 10-7 in a battle that lasted one hour and 15 minutes.
Bhupathi and Knowles had defeated fifth seeds Frantisek Cermak and Michal Mertinak in their first match on Sunday and with second win in a row they are on top of the Group B.
The top two teams from both the groups will qualify for the semifinals.
Last year in Shanghai, Bhupathi and Knowles had crashed out of the prestigious season-ending tournament in the round-robin stage itself.
“The easiest way to control your destiny is to win all three matches. That's been our goal. We've gotten two down and we've got one more to go. The positive is we have two wins now and the pressure is on the other teams,” Bhupathi said.
Bhupathi's Bahamian partner was all smiles after the win.
“We're excited, very excited. Especially because they were playing extremely well. They were serving at an incredible rate; very hard, but also high percentage.
“They were playing really, really well there in the first set. We just kind of rode them out, got a couple looks at a second serve in the second set, and were able to return well and turn the match around. We played really solid at the end and kind of raised our level,” Knowles said after the match.
Meanwhile, Leander Paes and Lukas Dlouhy of Czech Republic, placed in Group B, had lost their opening round match to Poland's Lukas Kubot and Oliver Marach of Austria 3-6, 6-7 (3).
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