Bhupathi, Stepanek out of Australian Open

Mahesh Bhupathi and Radek Stepanek bowed out of the Australian Open men's doubles competition at the quarter-final stage after a straight set loss against Sweden's Jonas Bjorkman and Max Mirnyi of Belarus.

The second seeded pair needed just over an hour to get the better of the Indo-Czech combination 6-3 6-2.

Bhupathi and Stepanek struggled on their serve winning just 65 per cent and 25 per cent of points on their first and second deliveries respectively.

As a result, they were broken four times while they could only get the better of their opponents' serve once.

In the last four, Bjorkman and Mirnyi will face the fourth seeded team of Australian Paul Hanley and Kevin Ullyet of Zimbabwe who defeated the French team of Nicolas Mahut and Julien Benneteau 7-6 (7/4) 6-2.

The other semi-final will pit top seeded Americans Bob and Mike Bryan against the third seeds Daniel Nestor of Canada and Bahamas' Mark Knowles.