Tennis

Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic.

THE CANADIAN PRESS

LONDON -- Daniel Nestor's stellar tennis season has ended in disappointment.

The Toronto left-hander and Serbian partner Nenad Zimonjic posted a 6-3, 6-4 round-robin loss to Frantisek Cermak and Michal Mertinak at the ATP World Tour Finals on Tuesday. The defeat ends the top-seeded duo's chances of hoisting the trophy for a second straight year.

"For sure it's disappointing," said Nestor. "We had high hopes coming in here. We were playing well, we were the No. 1 team. It's frustrating to lose to teams that we've been beating.

"But that's part of life, we had a lot of success this year. This is a down time."

Nestor and Zimonjic, who defeated Cermak and Mertinak last weekend at the Paris Masters, will play one more match in the round robin this week before heading home. They lost their opening match of the tournament on Sunday.

"We've got to bounce back, try to finish strong in the last match and carry that into next year," said Nestor.

Their chances of ending the season at No. 1 now rest with American rivals Bob and Mike Bryan. The brothers also opened the tournament with a loss and play their second match on Wednesday. If the Bryans win the rest of their matches en route to the title, they will finish the season atop the rankings. If they go 1-2 in the round robin but still win the title, they'll need Nestor and Zimonjic to finish the round robin 0-3 to secure the No. 1 spot.

"I don't want to wish them any bad luck, they're great players," said Nestor. "They deserve to have success and win. If they happen to not achieve their goal, then it would be great for us to finish No. 1."

Nestor and Zimonjic were beaten on a sixth ace from the opposition, which came on the first of three match points on the Mertinak serve.

Nestor's team lost serve three times and looked far from the ATP leaders who had won nine titles on the circuit heading into this week's finale.

"Obviously we're not returning that well," said Nestor. "We're not putting many balls in play when our opponents are serving. We have to give some credit to our opponents, too. They're serving pretty well."

Nestor remains the active titles leader on the ATP with 64 and has surpassed US$1 million in season prize money for the first time in his career.