CALCUTTA, March 18: Maharashtra's Mustafa Ghouse continued his good run in the National Grasscourt Tennis Championships, defeating Delhi's Vishal Uppal in the quarter-final today. Ghouse, who had upset second seed Vinod Sridhar in the second round, will now face third seed Nitin Kirtane for a place in the final at the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club tomorrow.Kirtane, who had won the meet at the South Club here in 1997, beat local lad Saurav Panja 6-3, 6-3. Reigning champion Marcus Hilpert also entered the semi-final with a comfortable 6-4, 6-3 over another Bengal-based player Sanzaruz Zaman. Hilpert will face Andhra Pradesh's Vasudev Reddy who beat Manoj Mahadevan 6-3, 6-4.The women's event saw an upset too when seventh seed Janaki Krishnamoorthy of Maharashtra beat fourth seed Rushmi Chakravarty of Tamil Nadu 6-4, 6-3 in the quarter-finals. The top three seeds, Sai Jayalakshmi, Manisha Malhotra and Archana Venkatraman joined Krishnamoorthy in the semi-finals. Manisha was the only women's winner tostruggle today. She was stretched to three sets by Gujarat's Karishma Patel, who had been seeded sixth in the tournament. Karishma won the first set 6-3 before the hard-hitting Manisha blanked her 6-0. Already having found her bearings, Maanisha then served well to win the decider 6-2.In a match between siblings, third seed Archana Venkatraman beat her fifth seeded sister Arathi 6-0, 6-1. Archana was winner from the very first point and Arathi knew that. Both played a relaxed game today. Archana will now meet Jayalakshmi while Janaki will face Manisha for a place in the final.
