Paris, May 26 (IANS): India's Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi with their respective partners advanced to the second round of French Open mixed doubles here Wednesday.
The seventh seeded pair of Paes and Czech Iveta Benesova defeated France's Aravane Rezai and Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgria 6-3, 6-1.
They now await the winner of the match between India's Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopanna and Chia-Jung Chuang of Chinese Taipei and Marcin Matkowski of Poland.
In contrast, the fifth-seeded pair of Bhupathi and China's Jie Zheng had to dig deep to beat Czech Petra Kvitova and Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukrain 6-7(3), 6-0, 10-8.
They now play the winner of the match between Czech Klara Zakopalova and Frantisek Cermak and Rennae Stubbs of Australia and Marcelo Melo of Brazil.