Second seed Venus Williams avoided a second defeat within 24 hours at the hands of Shuai Peng as she scraped past the Chinese in the second round of the WTA Bangalore Open on Thursday evening.
Venus, teaming up with sister Serena, had lost to Peng and her compatriot Tiantian Sun 5-7, 6-2, 11-9 in the doubles quarter-final only on the previous night.
In another match, top seed Jelena Jankovic of Serbia broke little sweat in scoring a comfortable 6-2, 6-2 win over Sanda Mamic of neighbouring Croatia.
The Serbian world No.4 will now take on Zi Yan of China in the last eight.
On Thursday, while the 15 double faults slowed her charge, Venus still managed a 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-2 win over Peng to set up a last eight clash with Russian seventh seed Vera Zvonareva.
The American had received a bye in the first round.
Unlike her sister, Venus was quickly off the blocks, pocketing the first set with breaks in the fifth and seventh games. But, having played solid till then, the American's game seemed to creep with errors once her serve started falling apart. She served three double faults in the fifth game of the second set to present Peng her first break.
Though her strong grounstrokes kept her in play, she struggled for rhythm against a slow bu steady Peng, who rarely gave her any pace to work with. Also, as is common to some of the players from China, Peng's double-fisted shots from both sides offered some resistance to the American's usually fluid game. The bounce also caused some problems for the players, with the ball just about catching the American's racquet head on return a couple of times.
Again in the tie-break, Venus was two match points up at 6-4, but served a double on the first and hit a forehand long on the second. At 6-7 down she again served a double fault to lose the set and give Peng a glimer of hope of a comeback.
After Venus took the first game on serve in the decider, the players traded breaks for the next five games. The American again doing Peng a huge favour as she serve three and four doubles faults in the third and fifth games respectively.
Though the clean winners were rare from Venus' racquets she was solid enough to to take the set 6-2.
Earlier, seventh seed Zvonareva and China's Yan Zi, who upset eighth seed Maria Kirilenko in the first round, also advanced to the quarterfinal.
Zvonareva quelled a first set challenge from Romanian qualifier Agnes Szatmari to post a 7-6 (5), 6-1 victory while the little dynamite Zi rolled on with a thumping 6-2, 6-1 win over Ukraine's Olga Savchuk.
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