IANS

New York, Sep 2: India's Leander Paes and Lukas Dlouhy of Czech republic advanced to the second round of US Open tennis, battling past Romanian pair of Victor Hanescu and Gabriel Trifu at Flushing Meadows.

Fourth-seeded Paes and Dlouhy, who were runners-up here last year, took almost two hours to get past the Romanian duo 7-6 (11), 7-6 (4) Tuesday.

Both teams broke each other once in the first set to take it into a tie-breaker. Paes and Dlouhy held their nerve in the keenly fought tie-breaker to take the lead.

The second set was also closely contested with both pairs holding their serve to stretch it to another tie-breaker that the Indo-Czech pair managed to close out.

Paes and Dlouhy will meet the winner of the match between Nicolas Almagro and Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo of Spain and Teimuraz Gabashvili and Dmitry Tursunov of Russia.

In women's singles, India's Sania Mirza will take on Italian Flavia Pennetta in the second round wednesday.