Chennai: Seventh seed and former champion Paradorn Srichaphan of Thailand and eighth seed Nicolas Mahut of France fell by the wayside, while three other seeds, led by world no.2 Rafael Nadal of Spain,sailed into the quarterfinals of the Chennai Open ATP tennis tournament here yesterday (Jan 4, 2007) night.

Mahut did well to rally from a set down but failed to keep up the momentum as he lost 6-7(6), 6-3, 3-6 to unseeded David Sanguinetti of Italy in a second round match, becoming the third seeded player to be upset in the singles main draw.

Sanguinetti, ranked 107, set up a quarterfinal clash with top seed Nadal, who expectedly defeated wild card Karan Rastogi of India 6-4, 6-1.

Earlier, Thai No 1 Srichaphan, winner of the title here in 2003, made a quick exit losing to Stefan Koubek of Austria 1-6, 2-6.

Second seed David Nalbandian of Argentina made his exit on Tuesday. In another second round match, sixth seed Fabrice Santoro of France got the better of Boris Becker-trained Bjorn Phau of Germany 6-4, 6-2. He meets third seed Xavier Mallisse of Belgium in the last eight.

In the last singles match of the day, fourth seeded Julien Benneteau of France won an interesting duel against Russian Igor Andreev 7-6 (4) 6-2 to face Koubek.

The match was on even keel in the first set as both players fought hard and held serve. However, the 40th ranked Benneteau broke the Russian's serve twice in the tie-break to take a lead and win the set.

The rivals battled it out, displaying good groundstrokes and winners at the net. However, Benneteau raised his game in the second set with some crunching forehands. He broke Andreev in the sixth game of the second set and again in the eighth game to win the set and the match.