Leander Paes made a first-round exit from the $ 1,410,000 Barclay Dubai Tennis Championships but Indian hopes were kept alive by Rohan Bopanna who stormed into the doubles quarterfinals of the hard court event.
Paes and his Australian partner Paul Hanley bowed after a 1-6, 3-6 mauling at the hands of second seeded pair of Simon Aspelin of Sweden and Julian Knowle of Austria in the first round on Tuesday.
However, wild card entrant Bopanna and his Pakistani partner Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi edged past Igor Andreev of Russia and Paul-Henri Mathieu of France 7-5, 6-4 in their opening round match.
The Indo-Pak duo faces a tough test in the quarterfinal as they will now be up against top-seeds Canadian Daniel Nestor and Serbian Nenand Zimonzic.
Another Indian in the fray, Mahesh Bhupathi and his Bahamas partner mark Knowles, fresh from a title victory at Memphis last week, will open their campaign against Jordan Kerr of Australia and Roger Wassen of the Netherlands.