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Paes-Bhupathi into round of four

Defending champions Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi -- better known, on the ATP doubles circuit, as "Indian Express" -- made light of the disadvantage of having to play two tough games on the same evening, and stormed into the semifinal of the $2.3 million Canadian Open DuMaurier Super 9 at Toronto.

In the quarters, they defeated the 8th seeded pair of Wayne Black and Sebastien Lareau 6-2, 5-7, 6-4, and will now face the third-seeded pair of Ellis Ferreira and Rick Leach in the semifinal.

Lareau, incidentally, partnered Alex O'Brien in this event last year, and lost to the Indian pair in the title game. This time round, he was looking for revenge, but the Indian pair made light of their own exhaustion -- the game ended around 1 am, Canada time, last night -- to win a good three setter.

Thus far, Paes and Bhupathi have picked up 181 points in this tournament, including 18 bonus points. However, it needs to be remembered that as defending champions, they are protecting over 400 points, which means that unless they go on to win the final, they will lose points they had earned at this stage last year.

Earlier in the evening, the Indian pair had defeated the unseeded pair of Brandon Coupe and David Randall 6-4, 6-0 to enter the quarterfinals.

Coupe and Randall were playing together for the first time this year, and had come through the qualifiers before accounting for world number 15 pair Stafford/Ullyet in the first round.

Coupe is ranked 76, and Dave Randall 88, in the ATP list.

In the other quarterfinal matches, the sixth seeded pair of Damm/Grabb defeated the Stolle-Suk combine 6-3, 6-1. Third seeded Ellis Ferreira and Rick Leach defeated the eight seeds, Johnson-Montana, 6-2, 6-1.

Two matches, between Knowles-Nestor(7) vs Ivanisevic-Philippoussis, and Damm-Grabb(6) vs Kratzmann-Kuerten has been rescheduled to late Saturday.