Top seeds Leander Paes and Miguel Angel Reyes-Varela finished as runners-up at the ATP Da Nang Challenger event in Vietnam on Saturday. The Indo-Mexican pair went down 3-6, 6-2, 9-11 in a nail-biting men’s doubles final against the second seeds Cheng-Pend Hsieh (Chinese Taipei) and Christopher Rungkat (Indonesia).
After losing the first set, Paes and Varela fought back to take the second 6-2 to force the match tie-breaker. It went all the way as well with the Taipei-Indonesia pair emerging 11-9 winners to life the title at the US $54,610 tournament.
Paes and Varela had not lost a set in their first two rounds, defeating N Sriram Balaji and Arjun Kadhe in the opening round. In the semi-final, fourth seeds Tsung-Hua Yang and Timur Khabibulin were accounted for in three games, 6-7, 6-3, 10-4.
Paes, 46 years old, had indicated recently that he had no intention of stopping anytime soon.
“I am really happy with the off-season training I have done. I have gotten faster, stronger and I feel really good with my game and I won’t be surprised if I have a really good year,” Paes had said after his defeat earlier this month at the Maharashtra Open.
