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Leander cruises ahead

Top seeded Leander Paes of India entered the quarterfinals of the $50,000 Challenger being played in Hong Kong.

He defeated Rogier Wassen of Netherland in two straight sets, 7-5, 6-4 in the second round match.

In the 1st set, both players held serve until Leander broke Wassen in the 11th game to lead at 6-5, and then closed the set at 7-5 in the next game.

The beginning of the 2nd set was not good for Leander, as he was broken in the 2nd game to fall behind 0-2. The Indian ace however broke back in the 7th game to go 3-4 on serve, broke again in the 9th to lead at 5-4 and then closed the match at 6-4.

Leander will now face Michael Tebbutt of Australia in the quraterfinal, later tonight.

Tebbut, a 28-year old Australian currently ranked 116 on the ATP, has been just inside the top-100 a few times this year and has been ranked as high as 87. He has wins against some top players like Mark Rosset, Albert Costa, Wayne Ferreira, Filippini, Squillari, Schalken, Gambill, and Lleyton Hewitt this year. He has 5 wins over top-50 players this year, with a few bad losses.

In the other quarterfinals Daniel Nestor will play Justin Gimelstob, Dennis Van Scheppingen will face Cecil Mamiit, and Lleyton Hewitt will face Karsten Braasch.

Leander's doubles partner, Mahesh Bhupathi, retired in his first round match against Lleyton Hewitt while he was trailing 4-6, 1-1.

Leander has 16 points so far from this Challenger. A win in today's quarterfinal match will take his points tally to 33 and the title win here can get over 75 points.

Playing here means that he will miss the qualifiers for the Stuttgart Super 9 tournament. Actually, he is doing the right thing because these are the toughest tournaments to get into, as they have the smaller draw for the Super 9s (48-size draws, with just another 32-draw tournament in the same week).

Stuttgart right now has the main draw closing at around 50, and even in the qualifier, Leander would face a couple of top-75 players and it's never easy to qualify here.

Taking these points into consideration the Challengers have become very popular lately, with many top 50-100 players playing 5-6 Challengers a year. It will stay that way, because ATP is reducing the number of big tournaments in the calendar.

Already, about 4-5 tournaments have been axed from the 1999 calendar (Philadelphia, New Haven, etc). Challenger points are nice security blankets. Players like Leander would need some 200 points from 5-6 Challengers in the list to be sure to stay up there on the listings.

Leander made a mistake in 1997, going almost 5-6 months without any Challengers, and not picking up much in big tournaments -- thus ending up at 162 in late February this year. He came back up with the 100 points in the 4 Challengers in Asia in March.

Picking them judiciously is the trick, and he has done that so far this year.