Tennis: Sania-Peer strorms in to the quarter-final

Add as a preferred source on Google

Stanford, July 26: Sania Mirza and her controversial Israeli partner Shahar Peer had to dig in deep to clinch a marathon three-setter victory against Tatiana Poutchek of Belarus and Anastasia Rodionoa of Russia to register their doubles quarter-final berth in the Bank of the West Classic here.

The third seed Indo-Israeli duo had to battle hard to get past the unseeded pair of Poutchek-Rodionova pair 6-1, 0-6, 11-9, thus making a quarter-final showdown against unseeded pair of Akgul Amanmuradova of Uzbekistan and Angelika Bachmann of Germany in the 600,000 dollar Tier II tournament.

After taking the first set in clinical style, the 20-year-old Hyderabadi girl and her Israeli partner became complacent in the second set, and russian-belarusian duo took full advantage of their complaceny and pocketed the set without dropping a game.

The third set, was however, totally different from the first two, as both the pair seemed in no mood to give an inch to their rivals. But after a marathon fight, Poutchek-Rodionova eventually bowed down against the class and experience of the third seeds.

The 35th-ranked Indian also won her first round singles match here defeating Akiko Morigami of Japan. She will now take on sixth seed Tatiana Golovin of France in the pre-quarter-final.

UNI