Having put next week's R1 draws onto the Race top 20 table ( http://bit.ly/1gqhHkq ), it looks like the boys have picked badly (or been unlucky) again - the top four pairs in the Race who are playing next week are all in Valencia (seeded 1-4), while the 3 pairs just above JM & JP in the race (excluding Paes & Stepanek, who have already qualified as slam champs and are not playing next week) are seeded 2-4 in Basel.
The top seeds in Basel are Bopanna & ERV, who are only 14th in the Race so must have been playing with other partners for a fair bit of the year.
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Hmmm. I'm not wholly certain that I'd call Nieminen and Tursunov a pair of singles specialists per se - Tursunov has always struck me as having parallels with people like Bjorkman and Mirnyi, insofar as being quite handy in both disciplines goes (though he's probably not as good in either as the aforementioned Swedish/Belarussian pair). In fact, he has more doubles titles/finals than singles. Nieminen's not bad in terms of doubles either, though less spectacular. And they won the Munich title together earlier this year.
-- Edited by Spectator on Tuesday 22nd of October 2013 08:19:58 PM