KARACHI Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and Rohan Bopanna entered the men's doubles quarter-finals of the Grand Prix King Hassan-II ATP Championship in Casablanca on Tuesday.
Pakistan's Qureshi and India's Bopanna beat Morocco's Rabie Chaki and Reda El Amrani 4-6, 6-2, 10-8.
The local favourites started the match in great style and broke Qureshi's first game to take a 1-0 lead. The Indo-Pak duo struck back immediately to break El Amrani's serve to make it 1-1 but they eventually lost the first set 4-6 in 31 minutes.
Both pairs were equal on 28 points each in the set.
The Moroccans' serve was broken early in the second set and when Qureshi and Bopanna took a 2-0 lead. Maintaining the lead, the pair broke the El Amrani-Chaki serve again in the eighth game and won the second set 6-2.
The Indo-Pak pair won 29 of the 46 second-set points.
The final set turned into a super tie-break as both pairs could not win consecutive games. At 8-7, Qureshi was serving for the tie-break and made it to 9-7 but the Moroccans broke back and were serving at 8-9. A long rally ensued at 8-9, which ended in favour of Qureshi and Bopanna when Chaki, returning a Bopanna forehand, missed a volley. The sub-continental pair won the super tie-break 10-8, winning 67 points in the set.
In the quarter-final, Qureshi and Bopanna will face Peter Luczak of Australia and Simon Greul of Germany who earlier upset tournament fourth seeds Michael Kohlmann and Jarkko Nieminen.
The Grand Prix King Hassan-II ATP Championship is the most prestigious North African ATP tournament, with a 25-year history.
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