Prahlad Srinath now shoulders a heavy responsibility. The second-leg winner today stopped the giant-killing run of Vishal Uppal, a wild card entry, 6-1, 6-2. The Kirtane cousins, Sandeep and Nitin, bowed out without troubling their opponents much.

Sixth seed Sandeep went down to No 4 Thomas Messmer of Germany 2-6, 0-6 after showing brief promise at the outset. So was the case of unseeded Nitin who held only five games in the entire match as he crashed 3-6, 2-6 to second seed Radim Zitko of Russia.

Top seed American Tom Chicoine made the semi-finals defeating his doubles partner Kunj Majmudar, also of the United States, 7-6 (7-3), 6-3.Uppal served just two aces to yesterday's 13 and, much to his chagrin, seven doublefaults.

Though the early moments provided signs of a good match, Uppal, unable to match the experience of Srinath, took a dip into oblivion. Uppal banged an ace to kick-off the encounter but then lost the game with two consecutive double faults. Srinath too did not experience a happy start, being stretched to save three break-points to hold serve in the second. However, the 25-year-old from Mysore picked his game up thereafter. He broke Uppal in the third (3-0) and seventh to win the first set 6-1 and then twice in the second set -- fourth and eighth -- to pocket the match in 56 minutes.

Results (quarter-finals)
(Seedings in prefix, country, ranking): 1-Tom Chicoine (USA, 500) bt 7-Kunj Majmudar (USA, 1232) 7-6 (7-3), 6-3; 4-Thomas Messmer (Ger, 949) bt 6-Sandeep Kirtane (Ind, 782) 6-2, 6-0; 3-Prahlad Srinath (Ind, 312) bt Vishal Uppal (Ind) 6-1, 6-2; 2-Radim Zitko (Cze, 464) bt Nitin Kirtane (Ind, 828) 6-3, 6-2.

Doubles (quarter-finals): 1-Nitin Kirtane-Sandeep Kirtane (Ind, 575) btThomas Messmer (Ger) -Balazs Veress (Hun) 6-1, 1-6, 6-4; Prahlad Srinath-Vasudeva Reddy (Ind) bt 3-Tom Chicoine-Kunj Majmudar (USA) 6-3, 2-6, 7-5; 4-Syed Fazaluddin (Ind)-Abraham Doug (USA) bt Vijay Kannan-Manoj Mahadevan (Ind) 6-2, 6-4; Rohan Bopanna-Kedar Shah (Ind) bt Blake Brinklow (Aus)-Niko Karagiannis (Gre) 6-3, 6-1.