Bhupathi-Stepanek cruise into second round

Paris, June 1 (UNI) Mahesh Bhupathi and his Czech partner Radek Stepanek made their way into the second round of the doubles competition with an easy straight-set win over the Polish pair of Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski at the French Open Championships here.

The unseeded Indo-Czech combine trounced the 12th seeded Polish pair 6-4 6-0 in just over an hour at the Roland Garros yesterday.

Bhupathi and Stepanek were broken twice in the first set but managed to pocket it as Fyrstenberg and Matkowski were making mistakes galore.

However, it was a different ball game in the second set as Bhupathi and Stepanek showed their utter dominance and broke their opponents thrice to fix up a date with Guillermo Garcia-Lopez of Spain and Filippo Volandri of Italy in the second round.

UNI