Former top five players Tim Henman, Marat Safin and Lleyton Hewitt bowed out of the Rome Masters on Thursday as the tournament's contingent of Spanish and South American clay specialists finally came to the fore.
Briton Henman, whose improvement on his least favorite surface was apparent last month when he reached the quarterfinals in Monte Carlo, was beaten 3-6 6-3 6-2 by Argentine Mariano Zabaleta.
Following the earlier exits of world number one Roger Federer and US Open champion Andy Roddick, the fourth seed's defeat only reinforced the sensation that it will be hard to prize the baseliners away from this year's title.
Zabaleta's reward is a quarterfinal against eighth seed Nicolas Massu, who dispatched a weary-looking Russian Marat Safin 7-5 6-4.
Rain delays forced the former US Open winner to play his second-round match against 10th seed Paradorn Srichaphan just hours earlier and he looked out of sorts, struggling to put power behind his serve or chase down the Chilean's metronomic groundstrokes.
Hewitt also seemed disturbed by the rain-breaks and went down 4-6 6-3 6-4 to Romania's Andrei Pavel in their second-round match earlier in the day.
Pavel led David Sanchez of Spain 7-6 2-1 in a third-round match that will resume on Friday when number six seed Carlos Moya, now the favorite, also meets Ivo Karlovic of Croatia before the quarterfinals.
The highest seed left in the draw is Argentine fifth seed David Nalbandian, who beat home favorite Filippo Volandri 7-6 3-6 6-4 and next faces American Vincent Spadea.
Former French Open winner Albert Costa also progressed to the last eight with an untroubled 6-2 6-3 victory over Peru's Luis Horna.
Henman started well, matching his opponent's super-heavy groundstrokes and timing his approaches to the net perfectly to break the Argentine to love in his opening service game, a break that proved decisive in winning the set.
Henman's collapse in the second, however, was just as spectacular.
With a fluffed volley, long backhand and a smash into the base of the net, he tamely conceded serve and won just three of the first 15 points to go 3-0 down.
"In the first set I played to as high a level as I can, but I couldn't keep it up," Henman said.
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