Sania-Liezel enters second round

NEW DELHI: Sania Mirza and her South African partner Liezel Huber sailed into the second round with a facile 6-0, 6-4 win over the unseeded Canadian-Slovak pair of Maurin Drake and Tina Krizan in the 1,340,000 dollar WTA Tier I event at San Diego, California.

The eighth seeded Indo-African duo will now take on unseeded Anna Chakvetadze of Russia and her American partner Jill Craybas in the next round.

Sania, who is ranked a career high 31st in the WTA doubles rankings, and Liezel were erratic with their serve -- commtting five double faults -- but their opponents failed to capitalise as the Indo-African pair sealed the match in their fevour in little over one hour.

Sania and Liezel blanked their unseeded rivals in the opening set, and the eighth seeds hit 31 winners on their way to clinching the first set against Maurin and Tina.

The second set saw the Canadian-Slovak duo come back strongly into the match, helped to some extent by the poor serve of the eighth seeds. The unheralded pair broke their seeded rivals three times but ran out of steam in the later stages as Sania and Liezel won the set and the match to move into the next level.

Meanwhile, Sania will kick off her singles campaign against American Meghann Shaughnessy in the first round later today.

Ranked 44th, the Indian teen has been struggling for form this seasn and Sania would be hoping to better her records in her preferred surface, hard court.