Mahut knocked out, Eschauer too bows out

The Chennai Open is proving to be a graveyard for seeded players.

The Chennai Open is proving to be a graveyard for seeded players. Fifth-seeded Nicolas Mahut of France and eighth-seeded Werner Eschauer (Austria) crashed out of the championship today.

Nothing went right for Mahut, who went down to Croat Marin Cilic 2-6, 4-6 in 76 minutes.

Cilic awaits the winner of unseeded Robin Haase (Netherlands) and qualifier Lovro Zovko (Croatia) in the quarter final.

Haase had put paid to the aspirations of second seeded Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus 6-3, 6-4 in the first round.

In a gruelling 152-minute encounter, Spaniard Guillermo Garcia Lopez came from behind to scalp Eschauer at 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (3) to progress to the quarter finals where he meets compatriot and top seed Rafel Nadal who defeated Indian-American Rajeev Ram 6-2, 6-1 in 65 minutes.

This year, five seeds (Marcos Bagdhatis-2, Nicolas Mahut-5, Jurgen Melzer-6, Werner Eschauer and Marc Gicquel-8) have been sent packing by unseeded players.

“I had some trouble early in the second set, but I adjusted my game to break Mahut in the fifth game. Mahut was playing at his best but for me a victory is a victory and it does not matter whether it was an easy or a tough match,” Cilic said.

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Cilic had qualified for six ATP tour events last season and had twice beaten Nikolay Davydenko, a top ten player.

The young Croat tasted success in both ATP and Challenger level play and is the youngest player in the year-end top 100 ranking.