Third seed Marin Cilic and fourth seed Stanislas Wawrinka will take early flights out of here, thanks to their quarterfinal defeats in the Chennai Open on Friday.
Fifth seed Frenchman Benoit Paire dug deep to eliminate Croat Cilic 6-4 1-6 7-5. Wawrinka, the fourth seed and world No 17, lost to unseeded Slovenian and world No 86 Aljaz Bedene 2-6 6-7(6).
World No 15 Cilic was not at all in his elements. He hit a string of unforced errors and that ultimately proved to be his undoing. The first set saw world No 47 Paire breaking his rival twice to serve out the set comfortably.
Cilic upped the ante in the second set wrapping it up 6-1, which raised the hope of Croatian running away with the tie but it wasn’t the case though.
Unforced errors again cropped into Cilic’s game in the decider which hampered his chances severely. Paire was up 6-5 and 40-15 in the 12th game served by Cilic, who put a return into to the net hand over the match to Paire.
“He surprised me in the first set, he played a different game. He has a good backhand,” said Cilic. “I lost momentum after I lost serve and he came back. He also played will in the last eight-nine games. He has got some good winners.”
In the other quarterfinal upset, Bedene broke Wawrinka in the fifth and seventh game to pocket the first set 6-2. The Swiss upped his game in the second set but that wasn’t good enough as Bedene won the tie-break 8-6.
Second seed Janko Tipsarevic cruised into the quarterfinals with a 6-2 6-4 win over Japan’s Go Soeda. The Serb will clash with Bedene in the semifinals. Paire takes on the winner of Tomas Berdych and Roberto Bautista Agut. At the time of going to print, Agut was leading 7-5 2-6 2-1.
p_vivek@dnaindia.net
Results: Singles: Quarterfinals: 5-Benoit Paire (Fra) bt 3-Marin Cilic (Cro) 6-4 1-6 7-5, Aljaz Bedene (Slo) bt 4-Stanislas Wawrinka (Sui) 6-2 7-6(6), 2-Janko Tipsarevic (Srb) bt 8-Go Soeda (Jpn) 6-2 6-4; Thursday’s match: Doubles: Quarterfinals: Raven Klaasen (RSA)/ Nicholas Monroe (USA) bt 1-Mahesh Bhupathi (Ind)/ Daniel Nestor (Can) 6-4 7-5
