Published on May 13, 2005

[TENNIS] The top three seeds cantered into the quarter-finals of the Bt400,000 TAT Phuket Open at the Phuket Tennis Club yesterday.

Top seed Vinod Sridhar of India, second-seed Toshiaki Sakai of Japan and third-seed Frank Moser of Germany survived second round matches in vastly different ways.

While Sridhar was extended to three sets by New Zealand’s Adam Thompson 5-7 6-0 6-3, Sakai and Moser sailed through comfortably.

Sakai dropped just three games to topple Australian Chris Letcher 6-1 6-2 while Moser had an even easier time as Patrik Schmolzer retired with an injury when trailing 2-5.

Eighth-seed Michael Yani of the United States gave a walkover to Frenchman Benoit Bottero when he was 6-3 4-6 1-4 behind.

Simon Stadler recovered from a set down to stop the winning streak of last week’s champion Alun Jones of Australia. It was a stunning defeat and the German won 3-6 7-5 6-4.

In Fukuoka, sixth-seed Suchanan Viratprasert stormed into the quarter-finals of the US$50,000 Fukuoka International Women’s Tennis with a convincing 6-2 6-3 victory over former world No 16 Deja Bendanova of the Czech Republic. Another Thai, Nappaorn Tongsalee went down to Japan’s Ayami Takase 2-6 4-6.

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