The curse of Coral Beach struck again yesterday as number one seed Paul Goldstein was spectacularly eliminated in straight sets from the XL Bermuda Open?s first round.

The American?s 1-6, 6-7 defeat to the unseeded Antony Dupuis of France represents the second year in a row that the tournament?s top seeded player has been sent packing in the opening round after compatriot Kevin Kim met with a similarly dismal fate in 2005.

Yesterday?s match was originally scheduled to be played on Centre Court, but the torrential morning rain played havoc with the schedule and forced them on to the low-key number eight court ? where a total of ten spectators watched some attacking, muscular tennis of the highest quality from an inspired Dupuis.

Though a little cumbersome in his movement because of a sore right knee which remained bandaged throughout, Dupuis was the more aggressive from the start ? serving big aces, pounding the ball from the baseline and generally putting the number one seed under intense pressure which he could do little to counteract.

The 33-year-old Frenchman broke Goldstein?s serve early in the first to go 3-1 up, before holding his and going on to win the set at a canter 6-1 ? proving why he was good enough to oust James Blake from the US Clay Court Championships in Houston last week.

While Dupuis looked sharp and determined, Goldstein by contrast was sluggish ? his serves lacking any real pop and being ruthlessly set upon as a consequence by an advancing Dupuis every time they dropped remotely short.

The American made a much better start to the second, however, adding some sting to his groundstrokes and forbidding his opponent to dictate the pace of play as he had been doing.

And after breaking Dupuis? serve to go 3-1 up, it appeared the American was beginning to locate the missing spark.

A couple of sloppy double faults in his very next service game, however, handed the initiative straight back to Dupuis ? who took the match by the scruff of the neck in the second-set tiebreak (which he won 7-3) to claim a well-deserved victory.

?I?m extremely happy with the way I played,? said Dupuis afterwards, while making light of his injured knee.

?I had a good win last week in America and I am now starting to do what my coach has been telling me to do for the last eight years and that is to be more aggressive and take the game to my opponents.

?So today, I looked to take the ball as early as possible and to come to net whenever I got a chance because against somebody like Goldstein you cannot afford to sit on the baseline.

?Last week my knee was giving me some problems but it is feeling a lot better than it was and I only feel it a little bit in the games.

?But I am really confident at the moment and looking forward to the next round.?

A disheartened Goldstein, meanwhile, said his natural rhythm had been disrupted by the slowness of the Coral Beach clay.

?The conditions really did not suit me at all,? he said.

?Antony is a big strong man and a big hitter who can hit through the ball a lot better than me on this sort of surface. And to be fair I gave him too many opportunities to do that by hitting short a lot of the time.

?I came into this week feeling fine and sharp, but somehow today my energy was not what it should have been. I?m really disappointed because I enjoy coming to Bermuda and as the number one seed I was hoping to have a good tournament.

?As an American, most of us grow up on hard courts and we are at a slight disadvantage when the clay court season comes along and we come up against some of the Europeans who are more used to the footing issues that you get on clay.

?But I cannot take anything away from him ? he played aggressively and I couldn?t find the energy to match him.?

In the first game of the day on court eight, meanwhile, which began at 3 p.m., American qualifier Nikita Kryvonos defeated wildcard Alex Kuznetsov in straight sets 6-4, 6-4.

He now moves on to play Spaniard Oscar Hernandez in the second round while Dupuis faces another American, Amer Delic, who came through 7-6 (5), 6-3 against Argentinian Juan Martin Del Potro.