Tue May 20 13:18:37 2008

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Calleri, El Aynaoui land in Casablanca quarters

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Casablanca, Morocco (Sports Network) - Third-seeded Argentine Agustin Calleri and Moroccan veteran Younes El Aynaoui were among Tuesday's second-round winners at the $575,000 Grand Prix Hassan II tennis event.

Calleri advanced to his sixth quarterfinal of the year by handling Frenchman Olivier Patience 6-2, 7-5, while the 36-year-old El Aynaoui beat Slovakian Dominik Hrbaty 6-3, 7-5 at Complexe Sportif al Amal. The wild card El Aynaoui captured his home event in 2002.

The clay-court specialist Calleri and El Aynaoui will meet here on Thursday.

In other second-round action, fourth-seeded Frenchman Marc Gicquel held off former top-five star Guillermo Coria of Argentina 6-1, 2-6, 7-6 (7-2) and French qualifier Gilles Simon overcame Serbian Boris Pashanski 3-6, 6-4, 6-3. Gicquel and Simon will square off in an all-French quarterfinal.

On Wednesday, second-round matches will come for top seeds Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Gael Monfils of France. The Australian Open runner-up Tsonga will meet Algerian wild card Lamine Ouahab, while Monfils will encounter Spaniard Oscar Hernandez, who topped Canadian Frank Dancevic 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-5) in a first-round bout that was suspended because of rain on Monday and completed on Tuesday.

Casablanca serves as a final tuneup for the French Open, which will get underway Sunday in Paris.