This is a city where they can make cream sneakers with brown stripes look attractive, where children and dogs do as they please, where the Roland Garros crowds boo the women's world number one and warm to players like Gustavo Kuerten.

The fifth seed, Kuerten is the Brazilian with cork screw hair tufting out from a headband the size of a cummerbund, a gappy smile and the closest thing tennis has to a crusty. Occasionally sporting a goatee, the grunge king they call "Guga" endearingly looks as though he's been raised in a hedge by sparrows.

The French love him. Like the cream sneakers with brown stripes Kuerten's non-style is desirable. The number five seed is the offbeat, out of step, crowd pleaser. Having won in Roland Garros in 1997, Kuerten is undoubtedly streaky but has frustratingly lost to less talented players in the intervening three years.

Yesterday, however, he moved past Nicolas Lapentti, a player whose tennis has finally eclipsed his reputation as a seducer. His affections for Anna Kournikova a few years ago gave him something of a public profile after he was famously dumped by the starlet.

A break in the first two sets for 63, 6-4 earned the 24-year-old Kuerten an unassailable lead. Digging in Lapentti squeezed in the third but he was always under pressure from Kuerten's ground strokes and although taking the match to a tie break, it was always the Brazilian controlling, finishing the contest in 2 hours and 38 minutes.

Kuerten now faces fourth seed Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who triumphed in a marathon three-hour plus match against Tim Henman's executioner Fernando Vincente. Kafelnikov in his 5-7, 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (7/4), 8-6 win has now played 11 hours 21 minutes tennis.

At the bottom of the draw Australian Mark Phillippousis bid adieu to Paris. Having ensured Pete Sampras would have a longer build up than usual for Wimbledon when he beat him in round one, Phillippousis found Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero a different prospect.

They say that if you put a Spanish player on a clay court at 8.00 a.m. he'll hit balls from back court until sundown. So it transpired in the player's first ever meeting with Ferrero, the Spaniard advancing in four sets, 6-2, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3. Unseeded Ferrero, `only' six feet tall and known as Mosquito, now meets compatriot Alex Corretja.