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KARACHI Pakistan's Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi and India's Rohan Bopanna began their Napoli ATP Challenger tournament with a win on Wednesday.
The Indo-Pak duo beat Thomas Fabbiano and Enrico Fioravante of Italy, 6-3, 7-6(5) in the first round of the clay-court tournament in Italy.
Qureshi and Bopanna broke their opponent's serve at 2-3 to take a 4-2 lead and then won their next two service games to secure the first set with a 6-3 win.
Having won break points during the Italians' first two service games, Qureshi and Bopanna failed to convert them. At 3-3 they broke their opponents to take a 4-3 lead but lost the advantage after Bopanna's serve was broken in the next game. With the second-set score at 6-6, Qureshi and Bopanna led the tie-break 3-0 and then went on to win the tie-break 7-5.
They will meet Blaz Kavcic (Slovakia) and Franco Skugor (Croatia) in the quarter-finals.
Qureshi left for Napoli on Saturday and will compete in a number of tournaments leading up to the French Open and Wimbledon.
“I want to get as much clay-court practice as possible before competing at Rolland Garros,” he told Dawn.com.
