Cincinnati: Top seeds Sania Mirza and American Bethanie Mattek hardly broke a sweat as they trounced Lilia Osterloh and Anastasia Rodionova in straight sets to breeze into the doubles semi-finals of the $175,000 Cincinnati Open.
Sania and Bethanie took little over an hour to quell the US-Russian pair 6-2, 6-3 in the quarter-final match.
The Indo-American pair will next face the winner of the match between Liga Dekmeijere-Ipek Senoglu and Akgul Amanmuradova-Varvara Lepchenko pairs.
Sania and Bethanie were in control right from the beginning as they held their serve, besides breaking the US-Russian pair twice, to clinch the opening set.
The second set followed a similar script as Sania and Bethanie continued their dominance, breaking Lilia and Anastasia thrice to seal matter in their favour.
Meanwhile, Sania continued her winning streak in the singles quarter-final match too. She beat Olga Govortsova of Belarus 6-1, 6-1 in straight sets to book her first-ever singles semi-final berth at Cincinnati Open on Friday.
Third-seeded Sania needed just 51 minutes to eliminate Govortsova. The Hyderabad girl will next face world number eight and top-seeded Anna Chakvetadze of Russia in the semis.
Sania said the win had given her much-needed confidence ahead of the challenging semi-final.
"You want to win at any stage of the tournament, but it (the score 6-1, 6-1) does give you extra confidence. You're in the quarter-finals, so you're playing the best eight, and you get an easy win," the 20-year-old said.
Chakvetadze advanced to the semi-finals after her opponent compatriot Elena Vesnina, seeded sixth, retired with a right shoulder strain. Vesnina was trailing 6-7 (3/7), 6-0, 4-1 when she conceded the match.
Chakvetadze had defeated Mirza 6-4, 6-1 in Hobart, Australia in their only career meeting earlier this year.
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