India's Davis Cup captain Leander Paes showed glimpses of his old hustling tactics to match his rival, but eventually went down to sixth seed Yen-Hsun Lu of Taipei 6-2, 7-6 (5), to become the second Indian player to be ousted from the ATP Chennai Open Tennis championship at Chennai on Monday night.
After Prakash Amitraj bit the dust, wild card entrant Paes followed suit, leaving the field to Karan Rastogi and qualifier Harsh Mankad to try and exploit the home advantage.
It was a late charge by Paes, who was not as focused in the first set as the second, which he took to the tie-breaker.
Paes was completely outplayed in the first set, as he went down 6-2.
Paes, not a regular in singles, brought out his best late in the match. Though he was broken in the first game, losing it without much of a fight, he got into form in the second to hold all his serves to take the set to a tie-breaker.
However, in the tie-breaker, his rival showed far swifter reflexes to win it 7-5.