Top seeds Sania Mirza and American Bethanie Mattek hardly broke a sweat as they trounced Lilia Osterloh and Anastasia Rodionova in straight sets to breeze into the doubles semi-finals of the $175,000 Cincinnati Open.Sania and Bethanie took little over an hour to quell the US-Russian pair 6-2, 6-3 in the quarter-final match.
The Indo-American pair will next face the winner of the match between Liga Dekmeijere-Ipek Senoglu and Akgul Amanmuradova-Varvara Lepchenko pairs.
Sania and Bethanie were in control right from the beginning as they held their serve, besides breaking the US-Russian pair twice, to clinch the opening set.
The second set followed a similar script as Sania and Bethanie continued their dominance, breaking Lilia and Anastasia thrice to seal matter in their favour.
Meanwhile, the Indian tennis sensation continued her winning streak in the singles quarter-final match too. Sania beat Olga Govortsova of Belarus 6-1, 6-1 in straight sets to book her first-ever singles semi-final berth at Cincinnati Open on Friday.
Third-seeded Mirza needed just 51 minutes to eliminate Govortsova. The Hyderabad girl will next face world number eight and top-seeded Anna Chakvetadze of Russia in the semis. Sania said the win had given her much-needed confidence ahead of the challenging semi-final.
"You want to win at any stage of the tournament, but it (the score 6-1, 6-1) does give you extra confidence. You're in the quarterfinals, so you're playing the best eight, and you get an easy win," the 20-year-old said.
Chavetadze advanced to the semi-finals after her opponent compatriot Elena Vesnina, seeded sixth, retired with a right shoulder strain. Vesnina was trailing 6-7 (3/7), 6-0, 4-1 when she conceded the match.
Chakvetadze had defeated Mirza 6-4, 6-1 in Hobart, Australia in their only career meeting earlier this year.
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