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Paes, Bhupathi in third round

The top seed Indian pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi won their second round match at the French Open doubles competition without any resistance, defeating the French wild card team of Jean Rene Lisnard and Michael Llodra 6-2, 6-4.

Their third round opponents will be decided after the match between 15th seeds Piet Norval/Kevin Ullyett and Lan Bale/Grant Stafford.

Meanwhile, seeded teams continued to have a bad time at the French Open. Today, too, there were upsets, as sixth seeds Olivier Delaitre/Fabrice Santoro lost to the unseeded pair of Wayne Arthurs/Andrew Kratzmann 7-5, 3-6, 4-6, and seventh seeds Paul Haarhuis/Jared Palmer lost to Javier Sanchez/Jan Siemerink 4-6, 6-2, 4-6.

Fourth seeds Wayne Black/Sandon Stolle won their second round match against the American pair of Mark Merklein/Michael Sell 6-3, 7-6(7-2) and will meet David Prinosil/Daniel Vacek in the next round.

Fifth seeds Jonas Bjorkman/Patrick Rafter defeated Bob Bryan/Mike Bryan 6-4, 6-2 and will meet Goran Ivanisevic/Jeff Tarango in the third round. Ivanisevic/Tarango defeated Byron Black/Wayne Ferreira 6-2, 6-3 in the second round.

In the other second round match, Nicklas Kulti/Mikael Tillstrom defeated Gustavo Kuerten/Nicolas Lapentti 6-3, 6-2. They will meet Diego Del Rio/Martin Rodriguez in third round.

Today's results came as good news for the Indian pair, as both their possible tough semi-final opponents, third seeds the Woodies, and sixth seeds Delaitre/Santoro bowed out of the tournament. However, the 10th seeds Novak/Rikl and eighth seeds Ferreira/Leach are still around and could be their potential quarter-final opponents.

In the other half of the draw, second seeds Knowles/Nestor, fourth seeds Black/Stolle and fifth seeds Bjorkman/Rafter (all potential final opponents) are still in the reckoning.