Stuttgart, July 18: Argentine baseliner Guillermo Coria outplayed Spain's David Ferrer 6-1 6-1 on Thursday to reach the quarter-finals of the Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart.
Coria, seeded second in the clay event, played close to perfection in a third round match that started 90 minutes late because of rain.
The French Open semi-finalist, the highest seed left in Stuttgart after top seed Carlos Moya of Spain bowed out on Wednesday, goes on to meet defending champion Mikhail Youzhny of Russia who knocked out Czech fifth seed Jiri Novak 7-6 (7/1) 6-4. The 21-year-old Coria, who won the Hamburg Masters and reached the final in Monte Carlo earlier this year, improved his record on clay this year to 25 wins for five defeats.
Third seed and home favourite Rainer Schuettler also moved through into the quarter-finals with a 6-4 6-4 win over 15th seed Alex Corretja.



Tomas Behrend, who knocked out top seed Carlos Moya on Wednesday, continued his giant-killing run with a 6-4 6-4 win over 13th seed Max Mirnyi.



Another seed to fall was Moroccan 10th seed Younes El Aynaoui, who went down 3-6 6-4 6-3 to Feliciano Lopez of Spain. And Russian 14th seed Nikolay Davydenko who lost 6-3 3-6 6-1 to Filippo Volandri of Italy.



But sixth seed Fernando Gonzalez of Chile managed to battle past Finnish 11th seed Jarkko Nieminen 7-6 (7/2) 6-7 (5/7) 6-3.


Bureau Report