Calcutta/New Delhi: Leander Paes is set to partner former world No.1 Rafael Nadal in the men's doubles event at the Paris Masters to be played on the indoor hard courts of the Palais Omnisports, in Bercy, next week.

"Looking forward to playing with this Champion @RafaelNadal at the #Parismasters this coming week...#Legend," Leander wrote on his Twitter handle, on Friday, also attaching a photograph of the Spaniard.

Leander did not have the best of season in men's doubles events this year and also lost in the quarter-final match of the Valencia Open, partnering Polish Lukasz Kubot. However, the country's tennis ace witnessed a great season in the mixed doubles event, having won the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open titles with Martina Hingis.

Fourteen-time Major winner Nadal, on the other hand, has been laid low by injuries of late. He failed to win a single Grand Slam this year.

The Paris Masters is the ninth and final ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event. As the final tournament of the men's tennis season, the cream of the crop will vie to win the prestigious title and clinch one of the remaining qualifying spots for the ATP World Tour Finals to be held in London from November 15 to 22.

For Leander, the loss that he and Kubot suffered at the Valencia Open quarter finals was certainly an unexpected one. The Australian-Brazilian pairing of Chris Guccione and Andre Sa accounted for the loss of Leander and Kubot, clinching the contest 7-6(6), 6-4 in an hour and 35 minutes on the indoor hard courts of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències on Thursday.

The first set was closely contested and neither pair won a break of serve as the set went into the tie-break. Guccione and Sa fired as many as eight aces in the set and also served some in the tie-breaker to go a set up.

Though the second seeds got a break of serve on the only opportunity they got in the next set, Leander and Kubot were broken once more which was enough for the unseeded pairing to seal the deal. Leander and his partner also erred in making five double faults to make matters worse for themselves.

Meanwhile, Nadal's foundation has created a project that will help young athletes from his homeland to obtain sports scholarships at the United States' universities and provide financial assistance for those who would be unable to cover the full cost of higher education there.

The 'Study and Play' project is in addition to four other sport and education programmes that the Rafa Nadal Foundation is carrying out for the benefit of disadvantaged youth in both Spain and India, said reports on Thursday, citing a foundation statement. The project, which the foundation said it was implementing in collaboration with I-Con Sports, offers young Spaniards "the tools to obtain university scholarships" regardless of their sport, "taking into account academic as well as sporting performance."

The foundation said that thanks to the sponsorship of a Spanish food supplement producer, it would be able to provide financial assistance to athletes who only obtain a partial sports scholarship from a particular United States-based university. For its part, I-Con Sports will assist with obtaining and managing sports scholarships.

"At present, the US university system is the only one that facilitates university studies with elite-level sport," the foundation said. "We've chosen to implement this new programme since it incorporates three of the main pillars of the Rafa Nadal Foundation: education, sports and youth," the foundation's president and Nadal's mother, Ana Maria Parera, said.