Top seeds Sania Mirza and Bethanie Mettack of USA served up a deadly cocktail of power-hitting and astute thinking to storm into the semi-finals of the women's doubles at the Cincinnati Open.
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 quarter-finals in the singles category for the third straight year after her 6-2, 6-3 win over Varvara Lepchenko of Uzbekistan on Thursday.
The 38th-ranked Sania, who is seeded third in the singles, looks favorite to advance to the semi-finals 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 hardcourt 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 semi-finals.
Sania and Mettack made their way into the doubles quarter-finals 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 encounter, 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.
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