Sania Mirza, partnering Swiss Martina Hingis, entered the women’s doubles quarterfinals with straight sets win, while compatriot Mahesh Bhupathi was ousted at the Madrid Open with a first round loss in the men’s doubles.
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In the second round, top seeds Sania and Martina, who had got a first round bye, took just an hour to defeat Slovakian-Romanian combo of Janette Husarova and Raluca Olaru 6-2, 6-3 on the clay courts of the Caja Magica on Tuesday evening. They will take on circuit regulars and seventh seeds Bethanie Mattek-Sands (United States) and Lucie Safarova (Czech) in the last eight.
Service games were broken quite regularly in the match. The unseeded pair broke Sania and Martina twice during the contest but the top seeds reverted by breaking their opponents thrice more to gain the upper hand in the match. A couple of double faults at crucial junctures also did not help Janette and Raluca.
Sania and Martina won 59 points in total to that of the Slovak-Romanian combine’s 34.
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However, Bhupathi’s luck ran out quite early as he lost the opener in straight sets. The South African-French pair of Kevin Anderson and Jeremy Chardy beat the Indo-Austrian wildcard combination of Bhupathi and Nick Kyrgios 7-5, 6-3.
Anderson and Chardy broke their opposing team once in each set to settle the matter with relative ease and advance into the second round.