Top seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi could not recreate their old chemistry and crashed out of the Indianapolis Tennis Championship with a first round defeat.
The 'Indian Express' pair failed to hold their nerve in the match tie-break and went down to the Canadian duo of Daniel Nestor and Frederic Niemeyer 4-6, 6-3, 10-12 in one hour and 25 minutes.
The result is bound to disappoint Paes and Bhupathi's innumerable fans who are expecting an Olympic medal from the duo.
After surrendering the first set, Paes and Bhupathi bounced back to snatch the second and draw parity. In the match tie-break, the Indian pair was trailing 6-9 before they went on to level the score and in fact lead 10-9.
Nestor and Niemeyer, however, were not ready to throw in the towel and won the next three consecutive points to get past their opponents.