Last week it was a soft pillow this week it was a little blister which undid Mark Philippoussis.
A disappointed Philippoussis served up a double fault on match point to crash out of the second round of the Lyon Grand Prix tennis tournament to persistent Moroccan Hicham Arazi today.
The careless 3-6 6-3 7-5 loss came less than 24 hours after his first round win over last week's Stuttgart Masters champion Wayne Ferreira in three hard-fought sets.
Philippoussis blamed a soft pillow for giving him a stiff neck which forced him to withdraw from the Masters and today it was his tender feet.
He used his big serve to good advantage but was unable in the end to overpower the agile Arazi whose best performance this year was a semi-final last month in Tokyo.
The Australian got up a break in the third set only to lose it as Arazi fought back for 3-all, then held for 4-3 but the serving error at the end proved decisive.
``I had a little blister on my foot and I got treatment,'' said Philippoussis.
``But Arazi played great tennis the whole match. When he was up a break I couldn't get a first serve in and he took advantage of that.''
Fellow Australian Pat Rafter plays Brazilian Gustavo Kuerten in a quarter final tomorrow.
Andre Agassi continued his rise in form in Lyon tonight, handily defeating Tommy Haas 6-2 6-3 for a place in the quarter-finals of the $US800,000 ($A1.53 million) Grand Prix.
The American second seed was untroubled by his German opponent, silver medallist behind Yevgeny Kafelnikov at the recent Sydney Olympics.
Agassi tomorrow faces a man who has beaten him in their last two meetings, Slovakian Karol Kucera who put out Swiss Roger Federer 3-6 6-2 6-1.
Agassi, playing in only his second event since losing in the second round of the US Open in August, will face his toughest test of the week as he takes on Kucera.
``He's a dangerous player, he moves well and uses the pace of the ball well. We've had some good matches,'' he said of a rival who leads 3-2 in their career series.
Agassi dominated against Haas, breaking to start the match and again in the fourth game of the second set as the contest went comfortably his way save a brief flutter near the end.
Agassi was broken serving for it as Hass rallied to 3-5. But the German double-faulted to lose in the next game and the match.
``It was good for me to break back,'' said Agassi. ``I was rushing to finish the match and made errors in the previous game.''
Frenchman Arnaud Clement knocked out fifth seeded Franco Squillari 3-6 6-2 6-3 to give Argentina two defeats on the day.
Dutch qualifier Raemon Sluiter beat Mariano Puerta 4-6 6-4 4-1 when the ailing South American retired with a left wrist injury.
Sluiter's only previous success of note was a finale in Amsterdam last summer, when he lost the title match on clay to Swede Magnus Gustafsson.
The 22-year-old couldn't hide his confidence.
``I'm not surprised to be in the quarters,'' he said. ``I did play a final and got through some tough matches here.''