Tipsarevic, Hasse enter QFs of Chennai Open

Chennai: Sixth seed Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia and eighth seeded Dutch Robin Haase entered the quarterfinals of the Aircel Chennai Open ATP tennis tournament with contrasting wins over their rivals here on Thursday.

Tipsarevic, world ranked 49, halted the run of giant killing qualifier Alexandre Kudryavtsev of Russia, beating him 6-2 7-6 (3) in 82 minutes, while 23-year old Haase got the better of another qualifier Yuichi Sugita of Japan 4-6 6-3 6-4. In the match between Tipserevic and Kudryavtsev, the Serbian was at his prime from the word go and never hesitated with his on-court movements. Tipserevic showed variety in his game and came up with winners with effective ground strokes and deep returns. His powerful serves also helped his cause and, in fact, served seven of the eight aces in the second set which went on serve before the tie break. Kudryavtsev remained cool throughout the second set, holding on to his serve but lacked the required experience in the tie break. In the tie break, Tipserevic rose to a 4-1 lead, mainly riding on to his opponent`s unforced errors and then yielded two more points. But the manner in which Kudryavstev collected two points from Tipservic`s service games with perfect execution of ground strokes looked as though the Russian was making a match of it but Tipserevic sent down an ace before winning two more points to wrap up the set set and the match.On the other hand, in the match between Haase and Sugita, the former was made to work harder by his fighting Japanese opponent. Haase was hesitant to play upfront initially, which Sugita made good use of in the first two sets. However, a rushing Haase`s successfully return of a Sugita drop shot at 3-3 in the decider was one of the highlight of the match. During the later stages of the match, Haase was more clinical in his conversion of break points, winning four of the six chances that came his way. World number 180 Sugita, however, converted only three of the eight opportunities he had. PTI