Australians Bernard Tomic and Marinko Matosevic took similar paths to the quarter-finals of the BMW Open on Thursday.
Both dominated the opening sets, lost the middle tiebreakers and recovered in the third.
Fifth seed Tomic beat Potito Starace of Italy 6-1, 6-7 (4/7), 6-3 to make his first career quarter-final on clay. Tomic was down a break of serve at the start of the final set, before coming back.
Photo: EPA
Matosevic defeated fellow qualifier Robert Farah of Colombia 6-1, 6-7 (2/7), 6-2. Matosevic is playing his first career tournament on clay.
Tomic next goes up against Feliciano Lopez, the second-seeded Spaniard who beat Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukraine 6-4, 7-6 (7/4).
Matosevic plays fourth seed Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany, who beat Ernests Gulbis of Latvia 7-5, 6-3.
In the other quarter-finals, third seed Marin Cilic of Croatia plays sixth seed Mikhail Youzhny of Russia and eighth seed Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus meets Tommy Haas of Germany.
SERBIA OPEN
AP, BELGRADE
Top seed Pablo Andujar of Spain rallied past Filippo Volandri of Italy 4-6, 7-5, 6-2 to reach the Serbia Open quarter-finals on Thursday.
Andujar had to save 10 of 14 break points he faced to beat Volandri in 2 hours, 20 minutes spent in humid, 28oC heat.
He is aiming to win his second title of the year after taking the title in Casablanca.
Benoit Paire of France also came from behind, beating Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 in 2 hours, 24 minutes for his third quarter-final of the year.
Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic defeated Victor Hanescu of Romania 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 and he is scheduled to meet Andujar next.
The match between third seed Jarkko Nieminen of Finland and Croatian qualifier Antonio Veic was suspended because of heavy rain.
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