Rediff

Basel, Oct 23: Leander Paes and Lukas Dlouhy survived a scare before beating Jurgen Melzer and Todd Perry in the first round of the Euro 891,000 Swiss Indoor ATP tournament in Basel.

The third seeded Indo-Czech pair shrugged off the initial hiccups to beat the unseeded Austrian-Australian pair 2-6, 6-3, 10-6 in one hour and nine minutes to advance to the quarter-finals of the hard court event.

The winners saved one breakpoint in the first set but dropped their serve twice to hand the first set to their rivals.

They had enough chances to draw parity in the second set but could convert just one of the five breakpoints. However that was enough to claw their way back into the match.

The experienced duo then had no trouble in winning the decisive super tie-breaker to seal the issue in their favour.

They next face German pair of Christopher Kas and Philipp Kohlschreiber in the next round.

The second-seeded pair of Mahesh Bhupathi and Bahamian Mark Knowles will open their campaign against Spanish pair of Feliciano Lopez and Marcel Granollers.