London: Unfazed by the early exit from ATP
World Tour Finals, ace Indian tennis player Leander Paes today
said he and his doubles partner Lukas Dlouhy had a fantastic
year winning two Grand Slam titles and hoped to come back
stronger next season.
The world's fourth ranked doubles pair, who won the
French and US Open this year, ended their campaign at the
prestigious ATP event with a 6-7, 4-6 defeat to Max Mirnyi and
Andy Ram.
Paes said they have to be more consistent and vowed to
get into the grind and work hard to come back stronger next
year.
"I think it's been a fantastic season. We're the only
team to have won two Grand Slams and we are obviously playing
for the big events," Paes said.
"I think that if you look at a whole year of 52 weeks,
there are five big events in the year.”
"You have the Grand Slams, you have the Masters, and then
you look at the next rung of events are the Masters series. So
for us having won two Grand Slams this year, it's a real
feather in our cap. It's something we've worked very hard for.”
"Now in the new year, 2010, we are going to be playing
together the whole year.”
"Basically, we need to work hard to be more consistent
away from the Grand Slams. It would be nice to be sitting here
next year with two Grand Slams under our belt, but be more
consistent also in the other tournaments," he added.
The 35-year-old Paes believes he and his partner still
need to learn a lot and find out ways to get the best results
even when the chips are down.
"I think there's a lot for us to learn. Our strengths are
when we play really well, it's tough to beat us," said Paes,
who along with his Czech partner have qualified for the Tour
Finals for the last two seasons.
"But I think when we play a little off that, a little
less than that, that's something that we have to learn a lot
more; how to play the percentage, how to make the other teams
fight even when we're not playing great tennis," he added.
The 10-time Grand Slam winner said the start of the
season next year will be very important and they would have to
get back to the court after a short break to fine-tune their
game.
"We've planned to play our first quarter completely. The
schedule is not that much different than this year. There are
a few weeks that are juggled around, but pretty much the
same," he said.
"The beginning of the year is important for us to get off
to a good start. So basically I would like to play a few more
tournaments next year.”
"This year I had a long break after the US Open. I got
better with my injury, but basically it was not so good for
the tennis. So I'll definitely play a few more tournaments
next year."
PTI
First Published: Saturday, November 28, 2009, 13:48