Indian stars Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi ended runners-up at the ATP AEGON championships after losing yet another final to American twins Mike and Bob Bryan, in London, on Monday.
The third seed 'Indian Express' squandered a first-set lead and lost 7-6 (2), 6-7(4), 6-10 to the top seeds after battling for an hour and 43 minutes.
Paes and Bhupathi had lost to the Bryans in the Australian Open summit clash too in January.
The defeat means a third title in the 2011 season slipped out of the hands of the Indian veterans, who had won the Chennai Open and Miami Masters earlier.
The Lee-Hesh pair earned plenty of break chances in the opening set but could convert only two out of seven.
The Bryan brothers also broke the Indians twice and a 6-6 deadlock forced a tie-breaker. Paes and Bhupathi raced to a 5-1 lead and converted the second set point to march ahead.
In the second set, the Indians did well by saving two early break-points and it went on serve till the fifth game.
Lee-Hesh converted the second break-point in the sixth game to create a mini 4-2 lead but a double fault by Bhupathi allowed the Americans to break back in the next game.
That proved disastrous, as the Bryans came out all guns blazing thereafter and stretched the match to the Super tie-breaker, in which they prevailed to claim their fourth title at Queen's Club.
Meanwhile, Sania Mirza is a win away from making the main draw of the women's singles of WTA AEGON International tournament, having reached the final round of the qualifiers with a hard-fought win over Georgia's Anna Tatishvili, in Eastbourne.
The seventh seed overcame a second set lapse to eke out a 6-2, 3-6, 6-3 victory over the unseeded opponent in a close to 120 minutes' second round match.
Sania now faces Austrian Tamira Paszek, who got a walkover from fourth seed Hungarian Greta Arn.
In the doubles, Sania and her Russian parter Elena Vesnina are seeded third and open their campaign against the Australian pair of Jarmila Gajdosova and Samantha Stosur. The duo were runners-up at the French Open.
Photograph: Reuters
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