Paes-Dlouhy in semi-finals

Leander Paes [ Images ] kept the Indian challenge alive at the French Open [ Images ]. Partnering Lukas Dlouhy [ Images ], he advanced to the men's doubles semi-finals on Monday after a thwarting a late challenge from fifth seeds Bruno Soares of Brazil [ Images ] and Kevin Ullyett of Zimbabwe.

The Indo-Czech duo won 6-2, 7-6(5) to set up a meeting with either top seeds Daniel Nestor [ Images ] of Canada [ Images ]/Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia or Russians Igor Kunitsyn/Dmitry Tursunov [ Images ] in the semi-finals.

Paes and Dlouhy dominated the opening set and broke twice before wrapping it up in just 36 minutes.

However, they had to stave off a strong challenge from the fifth seeds in the second set that lasted 56 minutes.

On Sunday, the Indian challenge in the tournament was reduced to just Paes after Mahesh Bhupathi [ Images ] and Mark Knowles [ Images ] lost a tough three-set pre-quarter-final to unseeded Jose Acasuso of Argentina and Fernando Gonzalez [ Images ] of Chile.

The fourth seeds won an hour and 56-minute battle 7-5, 4-6, 6-4.

It was a disappointing outing for Bhupathi, as earlier, partnering Sania Mirza [ Images ], he crashed out of the mixed doubles, losing in the first round to the French-Israeli duo of Nathalie Dechy [ Images ] and Andy Ram [ Images ].