The Hindu : Sport : Serena stretched; Nadal, Murray advance

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Serena stretched; Nadal, Murray advance

Chuang Chia-jung & Sania Mirza upset eighth seeds to make doubles quarterfinals

KEY BISCAYNE: On a difficult Monday for stars, top seeds Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams, Britain’s Andy Murray and Wimbledon champion Venus Williams advanced at Sony Ericsson Open here.

World No.1 Nadal, the Australian Open champion, was unhappy with his performance but reached the fourth round by defeating Portugal’s Frederico Gil 7-5, 6-3.

Nadal will next face Swiss 16th seed Stanislas Wawrinka.

“No opponent is easy, especially if you’re not playing your best tennis. That’s what was happening,” Nadal said. “I didn’t play very well. I had chances to lose the first set. I didn’t feel very well on court.

“I always want to win. My motivation is full in every match. But you can’t play well every day and today was one of those days.”

Heavy weather

Women’s No.1 Serena Williams, the reigning US and Australian Open champion, was often unfocussed but outlasted China’s 17th-seeded Zheng Jie 7-5, 5-7, 6-3.

“I don’t think I played great,” Serena said. “She played probably her best tennis yet. I started out great and then maybe lost my focus. Next thing I know, I was 5-all in the first set, which should have never been.

“Just happy to get through it because at one point I hit a ball in the bottom of the net and thought, ’Wow, I haven’t done this since I was a junior.”’

Williams, who needs to reach the final to keep her top ranking, won the last three games to keep her quest alive.

“I just felt like if I didn’t straighten up I was going to lose,” Williams said. “At that point, I was ready to get the match over. I didn’t want to lose and I knew I had to do what I needed to do to at least play a little better.”

US fifth seed Venus Williams ousted Polish 10th seed Agnieszka Radwanska 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 to reach the final eight, but like her sister was not happy with her performance.

“Every now and then everybody has those kinds of matches,” Williams said. “I was hitting really well in the practice. Came out and things weren’t going to the way I imagined they would, but that’s tennis.

“I just had a lot of errors. Errors, errors. It seemed like when I had the winner it became an error. On days like that, you just kind of have to let the errors go behind you and continue to play aggressively and not pull back.”

Patchy performance

Fourth-ranked Murray advanced by defeating Chile’s Nicolas Massu 6-4, 6-4. Next for the Scotsman will be 41st-ranked Serbian Viktor Troicki.

“The end and the start weren’t particularly good, but the middle part was very good,” Murray said. “I’m obviously happy I managed to close the match out in two sets. I lost my concentration towards the end. I just have to make sure that slip in concentration doesn’t happen again.”

Australian Samantha Stosur, ranked 42nd, continued her strong run into the quarter-finals by ousting French 20th seed Amelie Mauresmo 6-4, 6-4.

Stosur, who eliminated Russian World No.2 Dinara Safina in the third round, will next meet 11th seed Victoria Azarenka of Belarus, who defeated Hungarian 25th seed Agnes Szavay 6-2, 6-4.

Dementieva loses

The No. 4-seed Elena Dementieva lost to 18-year-old Caroline Wozniacki 7-5, 6-4. Wozniacki, the first Danish woman to crack the top 20, has reached a career-high 12th in the rankings while benefiting from recent workouts in Las Vegas with Andre Agassi’s former trainer, Gil Reyes.

“It feels amazing to me that I’m the No. 12 in the world,” she said. “As a little girl growing up I was always watching everyone on TV, the top 20 players, and I wanted to be that girl as well.”

Brave rally

In the women’s doubles, Sania Mirza and Chuang Chia-jung of Taiwan rallied to stun eighth seeds Maria Kirilenko and Flavia Pennetta 4-6, 7-6(5), 10-4 for a place in the quarterfinals.

The unseeded Indo-Taiwanese duo will next take on the winners of the match between the Argentine-Israeli team of Gisela Dulko and Shahar Peer and the Spanish combine of Anabel Medina Garrigues and Ruano Pascual.

Leander Paes and Lukas Dlouhy have reached the last 16 of the men’s doubles.

The results:

Men: Third round: Rafael Nadal bt Fredrico Gil 7-5, 6-3; Andy Murray bt Nicolas Massu 6-4, 6-4; Juan-Martin del Potro bt Janko Tipsarevic 6-4, 6-1; Fernando Verdasco bt Feliciano Lopez 3-6, 6-3, 6-4; David Ferrer bt Marin Cilic 3-6, 6-3, 6-4; Radek Stepanek bt Fernando Gonzalez 7-6(1), 6-4; Stanislas Wawrinka bt Igor Andreev 4-6, 6-3, 6-3; Viktor Troicki bt Bjorn Phau 6-4, 6-3.

Women: Fourth round: Serena Williams bt Zheng Jie 7-5, 5-7, 6-3; Caroline Wozniacki bt Elena Dementieva 7-5, 6-4; Venus Williams bt Agnieszka Radwanska 4-6, 6-1, 6-4; Svetlana Kuznetsova bt Alisa Kleybanova 6-2, 6-1; Victoria Azarenka bt Agnes Szavay 6-2, 6-4; Iveta Benesova bt Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-4, 6-1; Samantha Stosur bt Amélie Mauresmo 6-4, 6-4; Li Na bt Ekaterina Makarova 6-7(3), 6-2, 6-2. Doubles: Second round: Chuang Chia-jung & Sania Mirza bt Maria Kirilenko & Flavia Pennetta 4-6, 7-6(5), 10-4. — Agencies

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