Calcutta: Having bagged his ninth Grand Slam title last week at the US Open, his stated goal of No. 10 is very much within Mahesh Bhupathi’s reach.

“Having come so near that goal, it (title No. 10) is on my mind now,” Bhupathi said on arrival in Calcutta on Thursday in connection with next week’s Sunfeast Open.

Bhupathi won his latest major with Slovakian glamour girl Daniela Hantuchova, but he is not sure whether he will have the same partner for January’s Australian Open.

“I haven’t decided about my mixed doubles partner (for the Australian Open) yet? It doesn’t really matter whether it is Hantuchova or the 50th-ranked player,” Mahesh told The Telegraph on Thursday.

Bhupathi has won five mixed doubles crowns with different partners. He clinched Wimbledon in July with Mary Pierce. His other titles have been with Japanese girls Rika Hiraki, Ai Sugiyma and Russian Elena Likhovtseva.

“I don’t change partners as a matter of policy or anything, it just happens,” Bhupathi said.

On the possibility of teaming up with Sania Mirza, Bhupathi reiterated that he didn’t rule it out. “There are no immediate plans, it may happen in the distant future,” he said.

On the stand-off between men’s doubles players and the ATP, Mahesh said that he has adopted a wait-and-watch policy. “We will have to wait for three to four more months for any development,” Bhupathi said.

A pack of leading doubles players (including Bhupathi) sued the ATP recently, in a bid to prevent the men’s professional body from changing scoring rules and qualifying methods for doubles events.

A complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas, seeking an injunction to prevent the men’s Tour from implementing the changes and charging the organisation and its directors with anti-trust violations and breaches of fiduciary duties.

Apart from Bhupathi, a former world No. 1 in doubles, the other leading doubles specialists to have filed the suit are American twins Mike and Bob Bryan, Mark Knowles (Bahamas) and Daniel Nestor (Canada).

Bhupathi signed off with the observation that Sania has a very good chance of winning next week’s Tier III WTA meet at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.

Earlier in the day, Bhupathi visited a shopping mall and school where he met kids and distributed ticket. He also visited the courts at Netaji Indoor Stadium and supervised the work there for nearly two hours. He will meet chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Friday.