Sania beats the heat, enters round two of Australian Open

Melbourne, Jan 16 (UNI) The sweltering heat at the Melbourne Park was hardly a deterrent for Sania Mirza as she carved out a facile 6-3, 7-5 victory over Ukrainian Olga Savchuk to sail into the second round of the Australian Open here today.

The Indian will now take on the winner of the match between Japan's Aiko Nakamura and 32nd seed Eleni Daniilidou of Greece.

The temperature soared to 40 degrees Celsius here but Sania seemed unaffected by the searing heat and had no trouble getting past the Ukrainian, who is ranked 49 spots below her in the WTA rankings.

The Hyderabadi star, known for her explosive forehands, held her serve and broke her rival twice in the first set to race away with the opener in little over 40 minutes.

Savchuk struggled to cope with the heat and called for an injury time-out midway through the first set.

However, that hardly helped the Ukrainian as she committed six double faults -- besides wasting three break points -- to surrender the opening set without putting up much fight.

But the 19-year-old made a spirited comeback in the second set and managed to break Sania once but the fightback proved too little too late as the Indian had wrested the initiative by then.

An exhausted Savchuk paid for committing 23 unforced errors as a stronger Sania quelled her challenge to seal the match in her favour.

Sania later admitted that heat did get to her but having seen such weather at home, she could adapt better than Savchuk.

''Bombay (Mumbai) is more humid but here you can really feel the heat and you can feel it burning your legs at the changeover,'' Sania said.

''It's hot in India but not as hot as it was here today but it is a lot hotter in India (normally) than Ukraine,'' she added.

The world number 53 also thanked supporters back home for flooding her with motivating messages before the match and hoped that her exploits will enhance the popularity of the game in India.

''I got so many messages from people last night saying 'We're going to try to sleep early so that we can get up early at 5.30 in the morning to watch the match','' she said.

''I've never seen or heard of that before of people following tennis in such a big way,'' she added.

UNI