As both reached the finals, expectations reached a crescendo. Though Paes and Bhupathi had remained partners for a long time, winning three Grand Slams together before they separated, they had yet not raised their rackets against each other in a Grand Slam.

 

The action packed match ended with the defeat of Bhupathi-Knowles and Paes-Dlouhy' win at 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, in Flushing Meadows, New York. While the latter had a slow first round, they rose up to the challenge in the second and swept it away in the third.

 

As soon as the match began, Bhupathi and Knowles reached 2-0, while Paes and Dlouhy continued to struggle with their serve till the second set. Till this point, the match appeared to be an easy win for the former. This change happened in the fourth game, when Paes's forehand down the line return off Knowles's serve with no reply. This point raised the enthusiasm for the Indo-Czech pair. .

 

The see-saw battle continued through the first two sets. In the beginning of the third, however, Paes and Dlouhy took the advantage and broke Knowles.

 

This is the second Grand Slam win for Leander and Dlouhy this year, the French Open being the first. The win is also his second for the US Open, as he had won the title for the American tennis tournament in 2006 with then partner Martin Damm. He has played in the US open about five times.

 

Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi as partners were a strong doubles team, who stormed through several grand slams, Olympic matches as well as the Davis Cup in the nineties. However, the pair's relationship broke up, though the cause of the rift is still not known. Speculations have been made that the duo had ego clashes, tensions about who received more attention etc.

They went their separate ways after winning the 2006 Asian Games, though they did come together in 2008 to form a strong entry for India in the Beijing 2008 Olympics.