Leander Paes kept the Indian challenge alive at the French Open. Partnering Lukas Dlouhy, he advanced to the men's doubles semi-finals on Monday after a thwarting a late challenge from fifth seeds Bruno Soares of Brazil 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 of Canada/Nenad Zimonjic of Serbia or Russians Igor Kunitsyn/Dmitry Tursunov 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 and Mark Knowles lost a tough three-set pre-quarter-final to unseeded Jose Acasuso of Argentina and Fernando Gonzalez 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, he crashed out of the mixed doubles, losing in the first round to the French-Israeli duo of Nathalie Dechy and Andy Ram.
