Bhupathi-Stepanek cruise into quarter-finals

Paris, June 4 (UNI) Mahesh Bhupathi kept India's flags fluttering at the French Open Championships when he and his Czech Republic partner Radek Stepanek thrashed Israeli pair of Jonathan Erlich and Andy Ram to enter the quarter-finals here today.

The Indo-Czech pair showed their class in the clay surface as they trounced the seventh seed Israeli pair 7-6, 6-4 to pocket the match a berth in the last eight.

The first set was evenly contested as both the teams held their serve to take into a tie-breaker. But Erlich and Ram could not handle the continuos pressure of the unseeded Indo-Czech and faltered in the tie-breaker to hand over the set.

Up by a set, Bhupathi and Stepanek then seemed unstoppable as only one service break in the second set was enough for them to clinch the match in one hour 33 minutes.

In the last eight, Bhupathi and Stepanek will face the winners of the match between second seed Jonas Bjorkman-Max Mirnyi and Dutch-South African pair of Rogier Wassen and Jeff Coetzee.

UNI