Aisam, Melzer reach Australian Open second round

KARACHI: Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi has finally got a doubles partner as he has been joined by left-handed Jurgen Melzer from Austria.

Aisam and Melzer started their campaign from Australian Open, first grand slam of the year, winning their first round match.

Aisam and Melzer, ranked 40th and 151st, respectively, defeated the 13th seed pair of Mate Pavic from Croatia and Alexander Peya from Austria, ranked 29th and 26th, respectively, 6-4, 2-6, 7-5 in the first round.

Aisam and Melzer face the unseeded pair of Brian Baker from the US and Nikola Mektic from Croatia in the second round.

Melzer has played Australian Open 12 times and his best doubles performance was reaching the semi-finals in 2005.

Aisam has played this grand slam seven times and has never crossed the third round.

Recently, Aisam won ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand, so he is in high spirits and hopes to better his performance in Australian Open.

Aisam had wanted to partner with Melzer for a long time. “This is for the first time Aisam has paired up with Melzer. He approached him last year but that didn’t get through,” Aisam’s father Ehtisham-ul-Haq told ‘The News’. “Melzer’s rankings have come down because of injuries, but now they are doing great,” he added.

He said that this partnership was for a long time but owing to low ranking of Melzer they would not get to play many events during the year. “But we are hopeful that their partnership will click and they will surely go up in rankings and win events,” said Ehtisham.