Tennis: Team Sania-Mettack cruises into semis

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Cincinnati (USA) July 20 : Top seeds Sania Mirza and Bethanie Mettack of US served up a deadly cocktail of powerhitting and astute thinking to storm into the semifinals of the Women's doubles at the Cincinnati Open here.

Sania continued her honeymoon at the WTA event as she partnered Mettack to demolish the USA-Russian pair of Lilia Osterloh and Anastasia Rodionova, in straight sets 6-2, 6-3.

Anastasia and Osterloh never looked threatening as the top seeded combo did not allow them any leeway throughout the one-sided match.

The 20-year-old Hyderabadi sensation had already breezed into the quarterfinals in the singles category for the third straight year after her 6-2, 6-3 win over Varvara Lepchenko of Uzbekistan yesterday.

The 36th-ranked Sania, who is seeded third in the singles, looks favorite to advance to the semifinals when she faces Olga Govortsova of Belarus later in the day.

The Indo-American pair outplayed their unseeded rivals in the second round tie of the 175,000 dollar Tier 3 hard court tournament and will now meet the winner of the match between A Amanmuradova (UZB)/V Lepchenko (UZB) and L Dekmeijere (LAT) I Senoglu (TUR) in the semifinals.

Sania and Mettack made their way into the doubles quarterfinals after a 6-4, 6-0 victory over the Colombian-Chinese pair of Catalina Castano and Meng Yuan.

Sania, teaming up with Poland's Marta Domachowska, finished runners-up here last year.

In the other doubles encounters, third seeded Japanese duo of Akiko Morigami and Aiko Nakamura won 6-7(4), 6-3, 10-4 in a tough contest against Australian Monique Adamczak and Romanian Anda Perianu.

Even the Russian-Belurussian pair of A Jidkova and T Poutchek progressed to the last four when they upset second-seeded Russian N Grandin and France' C Pin 7-6, 6-1.

UNI






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