Byron Black demolishes inconsistent Paes

Paes had only a few moments of domination in the first set when he came back from a break down, but Black tightened up to break Paes in the eighth before serving out the set.

In the second, Black’s dominance was far more obvious and there was little that Paes could do against an opponent who had answers for everything that the Indian threw at him. So much so that the match ended in arush with Black cracking Paes wide open to race away with the set.

Meanwhile Mikael Tillstrom’s streak of success continued as he committed fewer errors to pack off second seeded Karol Kucera of Slovakia 7-5, 4-6, 6-2, en route to the quarterfinals, here on Thursday. Tillstrom, a winner here in 1997 and finalist last year, but unseeded this time around, kept his nerve at the finish to overcome Kucera, ranked No.10 in the World.

Late in the night, top seed and World No 2 Carlos Moya of Spain nearly came a cropper against Wayne Black of Zimbabwe who took the title favourite to three sets in a match that witnessed an amazing turnaround. After being outplayed in the first set, Black came surging back in the second before Moya got his act together to save the tournament from being robbed off its starcast. Moya won 6-3, 1-6, 7-5.

The other surprise of the day came on the outside court when promising Australian Andrew Ilie, the fifth seed, went out in three sets to Italian Vincenzo Santopadre who won 6-2, 5-7,6-3, while Rainer Schuttler of Germany, seeded seventh, came through 6-1, 6-2, against wild card entry, Andreas Vinciguerra of Sweden.

Also through to the round of eight was eighth seeded John Van Lottum of the Netherlands who overcame Jonathan Stark of the United States, 7-6 (12), 0-6, 7-6 (6), and was joined by Australia’s Richard Fromberg, a 6-4, 1-6, 6-2 winner over Lars Burgsmuller of Germany.

Of the lot, the Tillstrom-Kucera match was the biggest letdown as both players never really settle down to play quality tennis that was expected.In fact, there were as many as 14 service breaks over three sets apart from a galore of errors. However, Tillstrom looked the steadier of the two and came up with several blazing winners in the third set to kill Kucera’s challenge. The Slovak was expected to carry on the good work he had put in over the weekend when he had powered his country past Sweden in the Davis Cup tie. But then, Tillstrom, who had reportedly vowed revenge, kept his word to author the biggestupset of the day.