Paes-Zimonjic in Hamburg semis

Leander Paes and Nenad Zimonjic beat the third seeded American pair of Mike and Bob Bryan in a thrilling contest to make it to the last four teams of the Hamburg Masters doubles on Friday.

Paes- Zimonjic defeated the Americans 3-6, 7-6 (5), 7-5 and will match up against the tenth seeds Michael Lldora and Fabrice Santoro in the semi-final on Saturday.

The French pair earlier upset the top seeds Mark Knowles and Daniel Nestor 6-4, 6-4.

Paes and Zimonjic, of Serbia-Montenegro, started off on the wrong foot but the Bryan brothers were unable to finish off the challenge in the second set. The eighth seeds fought hard to drag the set to the tie-breaker and eventually won it 7-5.

Though more comfortable on hard courts, Mike and Bob, kept the fight up in the third set as well but Paes' volleys and Zimonjic's serve combined well to take them to the next round.

The other semi-final will be between the Olympic bronze-medal winning pair of Mario Ancic and Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia and second seeds Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi.