Sania-Vania out of doubles event

Second seeds Sania Mirza and Vania King have crashed out of the doubles event of the Japan Open.
They suffered a shock straight-set defeat at the hands of unseeded French pair of Julie Coin and Mathilde.

The Indo-American pair lost lost 4-6, 2-6 in the quarter-final of the USD 220,000 WTA hard-court event after battling for one hour and seven minutes.

Sania got 70 ranking points for making the last-eight stage and will share USD 1,650 prize money with Vania.

To survive in the event, Sania will have to beat World number 13 and second seed Marion Bartoli of France in the singles competition on Friday.

Sania and Vania had plenty of chances against their rivals in the both the sets but could not cash in on.

They dropped serve twice in the first set and missed equal number of chances on their opponents' serve.

They saved five breakpoints and were successful in breaking the French pair once but that was not enough.

The second set too saw the second seeds missing many a chances as they squandered three breakpoints and dropped their own serve thrice.

Pennetta eases into the second round

Top seed Flavia Pennetta made light work of American Meghann Shaughnessy in the Generali Ladies with a 6-1 6-1 victory.
The Italian forced 12 break points on her way to victory.

Sixth seed Sorana Cirstea was sent home after losing 6-3 6-3 to qualifier Julia Goerges, but all the other seeds in action survived.

Number five Iveta Benesova saw off Stephanie Gehrlein 7-5 6-0, while seventh seed Lucie Safarova powered past Patricia Mayr 6-2 6-1 and number eight Sara Errani beat Arantxa Parra Santonja 6-2 6-3.

Also going through were Anna-Lena Groenefeld, a 7-5 6-1 winner over Roberta Vinci, Tatjana Malek, who beat Aravane Rezai 7-5 7-5, and Olga Govortsova, a 6-2 6-7(7/9) 6-2 winner over Petra Martic.