Australians Bernard Tomic and Marinko Matosevic took similar paths to the quarterfinals of the BMW Open on Thursday.
Both dominated the opening sets, lost the middle tiebreakers and recovered in the third.
The fifth-seeded Tomic beat Potito Starace of Italy 6-1, 6-7 (4), 6-3 to make his first career quarterfinal on clay. Tomic was down a break of serve at the start of the final set before coming back.
Matosevic defeated fellow qualifier Robert Farah of Colombia 6-1, 6-7 (2), 6-2. Matosevic is playing his first career tournament on clay.
Tomic next goes against Feliciano Lopez, the second-seeded Spaniard who beat Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukraine 6-4, 7-6 (4).
Matosevic plays fourth-seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany, who beat Ernests Gulbis of Latvia 7-5, 6-3.
Kohlschreiber and Lopez had byes into the second round.
In the other quarterfinals, third-seeded Marin Cilic of Croatia plays sixth-seeded Mikhail Youzhny of Russia and eighth-seeded Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus meets Tommy Haas of Germany.
