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Sania-Elena make quarters in Indian Wells
Sania Mirza and Elena Vesnina recovered from a second-set lapse against Timea Bacsinszky and Alberta Brianti to advance to the doubles quarterfinals of the Indian Wells WTA Premier event, here.
Sania Mirza and Elena Vesnina recovered from a second-set lapse against Timea Bacsinszky and Alberta Brianti to advance to the doubles quarterfinals of the Indian Wells WTA Premier event, here.
The second seeded Indo-Russian pair scored a 6-1 3-6 10-2 in the second round of the $5,536,664 hard court tournament.
They await the winner of the other second round match between the pairs of Irina-Camelia Begu/Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez and Gisela Dulko/Paola Suarez.
Sania’s singles campaign had ended with a second round defeat against world number 26 Anabel Medina Garrigues.
Easy for Rafa, Roger
Twice champion Rafa Nadal and triple winner Roger Federer barely raised a sweat as they each cruised into the third round with imperious victories.
Spaniard Nadal ruthlessly dealt with Argentine Leonardo Mayer 6-1 6-3 before Swiss maestro Federer eased past American wild card Denis Kudla 6-4 6-1. Federer next faces towering Canadian Milos Raonic, a 6-4 6-2 winner against Argentina's Carlos Berlocq. In other matches, fifth-seeded Spaniard David Ferrer crushed Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov 6-2 6-2, David Nalbandian of Argentina battled past Croat Marin Cilic 7-6 7-6.
Kvitova bundled out
Top seed Victoria Azarenka charged ominously into the fourth round while third-seeded Petra Kvitova made an unexpected early exit.
Belarusian world number one Azarenka crushed Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-1 6-2, improving her record to 19-0 this year, but Kvitova was ousted 2-6 6-2 6-3 by American teenager Christina McHale.
