Haarhuis and Eltingh favored to retain ATP World Doubles
JAKARTA (JP): The Dutch doubles team of Paul Haarhuis and Jacco Eltingh is favored to retain the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Doubles championship title here and to seal the season with a world number one tag.
The year-end tournament is still two weeks away, but the solid combination of Haarhuis and Eltingh has enabled the two to take a commanding lead in the IBM/ATP Tour rankings with 4,182 points. The number two team of South Africa's Byron Black and American Jonathan Stark is 700 points adrift.
"The hard court of the Senayan tennis stadium will be the ground for Jacco and Paul to excel," ATP's tournament director Russel Barlow said yesterday. The pair triumphed in the Australia Open and the U.S. Open, two of the Grand Slam tournaments played on a hard surface, this year. They look destined to enter the Nov. 23-Nov. 27 event as the top seeds.
As of Nov. 6, both have taken six out of their seven titles of the year on hard surface courts. They last beat defending champions Black and Stark for the Paris Open crown last Sunday, the only tournament they won on a softer surface.
The World Doubles final will field eight best pairs in round- robin matches. The teams will be vying for a total of US$1.3 million in cash prizes and the winners' 640 ranking points.
ATP decided to remove the final from Johannesburg to Jakarta due to the major political changes in South Africa. Indonesia's capital city will play host to the year-end championship twice, but is allowed to extend the deal to three years.
Seven teams
The defending champions now lead seven teams who have already booked places for the final. Another Dutchman, Tom Nijssen, and his Czech partner, Cyril Suk, are the seventh duo to qualify, despite their early exit from the second round of last week's tournament in Paris.
The three tournaments, which are now underway in Antwerp, Moscow and Buenos Aires, will serve as the deciding ground for American doubles squad of Patrick McEnroe and Jared Palmer and the Spanish team of Sergio Casal and Emilio Sanchez. One or the other will secure the last berth.
Competing in Antwerp, McEnroe, who won the World Doubles final in 1989 with compatriot Jim Grabb, and Palmer, have a greater chance to maintain the American tradition of making an appearance in the lucrative championship, following the Spaniards' failure in Montevideo last week.
Sanchez and Casal, who fell in the last hurdle to home favorites Marcelo Filippini and Luiz Mattar last week, desperately need a victory in Buenos Aires. If they lose they hand the tickets to Jakarta to their American rivals. The Spaniards have made it through the World Doubles championship for a record seven times.
ATP will invite the ninth squad as reserved players to Jakarta.
The ATP World Doubles championship final, the 17th meet since 1979, will be held a week after the same season-ending tournament for singles players in Frankfurt, Germany.
Doubles rankings 1. Jacco Eltingh/Paul Haarhuis 4,182 2. Byron Black/Jonathan Stark 3,406 3. Todd Woodbridge/Mark Woodforde 3,396 4. Grant Connel/Patrick Galbraith 3,175 5. David Adams/Andrei Olhovsky 2,069 6. Jan Appel/Jonas Bjorkman 2,045 7. Cyril Suk/Tom Nijssen 1,553 8. Patrick McEnroe/Jared Palmer 1,470 9. Sergio Casal/Emilio Sanchez 1,361 10. Henrik Holm/Anders Jarryd 1,337