Top seeds Leander Paes and Mahesh Buphathi won their opening match Wednesday in the round robin of the ATP Tour World Doubles Championships in Connecticut.

India's Bhupathi and Paes beat eighth-seeded Piet Norval of South Africa and Zimbabwe's Kevin Ullyett 7-6 (7-1), 6-3 in a gold group match.

Bhupathi and Paes, the 1997 champions, reached in all four Grand Slam finals this season, winning the French Open and Wimbledon in addition to a title at the Gold Flake Open in their homeland at Chennai.

Second seeds Todd Woodbridge and Mark Woodforde of Australia, the top seeds in the green group, also won over defending champion Paul Haarhuis and his new partner Jared Palmer 6-4, 6-2.

Haarhuis and his fellow Dutchman Jacco Eltingh won last year in Eltingh's farewell to the tennis circuit. This season Haarhuis tried out several partners before settling on Palmer, with whom he reached five finals, including Wimbledon.

Their only title this year came at the RCA Championships in Indianapolis in August.

In other matches on Wednesday, the third-seeded pair of South African Ellis Ferreira and American Rick Leach upset number six Wayne Black of Zimbabwe and Sandon Stolle of Australia 6-3, 6-2 in the gold group, and the fourth-seeded duo of Sebastien Lareau of Canada and Alex O'Brien of the United States downed fifth-seeded South Africans David Adams and John-Laffnie de Jager 6-2, 7-6 (7-5) in the green.

The event uses a round-robin format with eight teams divided into two groups. Each pairing plays the others in its group once and the top two teams with the best record in each group advance to Saturday's semi-finals. (Xinhua)