Leander Paes said that he had other goals to concentrate on before thinking about reuniting with his estranged partner at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
NEW DELHI: Leander Paes has suggested that partnering Mahesh Bhupathi in team events might not be an automatic choice anymore.
Refusing to accept the olive branch recently offered by Bhupathi, Paes said that he had other goals to concentrate on before thinking about reuniting with his estranged partner at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
"My main focus is on Wimbledon as the next Grand Slam that I would like to win. Last year we (himself and Martin Damm) won the US Open, so we will try to retain the US Open title in September this year. Those are the things that I'm concentrating on," Paes said.
The multiple Grand Slam champion said that now that Bhupathi had withdrawn from playing in Davis Cup, he had a responsibility to consider playing with his other teammates.
"... looking at the Olympics, I also look at the boys who are actually representing the country at the Davis Cup," he said.
"Rohan Bopanna was out there and played a fantastic tie against Kazakhstan and was unlucky not to win his last match. He won the doubles with me and we did excellently well.
"Mahesh is still at the higher echelons of the game at 26 or 27 in the world. So when the time comes to think of the Olympics, I will get down to that. But right now, I'm not concentrating on it.
"I find that I'm still in the peak of my career and I really want to focus on the ATP Tour."
The former world number one pair had a public fall-out at the Doha Asian Games in December when they won the individual doubles gold.
Bhupathi declared after the competition that he would never play again with his former partner but recently said that their partnership gave India the best chance of winning a tennis medal in Beijing.
The duo fell agonisingly short of a bronze at the Athens in 2004 when they lost a four-hour battle to Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic and Mario Ancic.
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