Sania beats Hingis at East West Bank Classic

Indias tennis ace Sania Mirza continued her impressive form of late by beating world number 12 Martina Hingis in the East West Bank Classic WTA tournament here to enter the quarterfinals.

Carson, Aug 8 : India's tennis ace Sania Mirza continued her impressive form of late by beating world number 12 Martina Hingis in the East West Bank Classic WTA tournament here to enter the quarterfinals.

World number 30 Sania beat the seventh seed Swiss player 6-2, 2-6, 6-4 in a second-round match of the 600,000 dollars tournament on Tuesday night.

In the last eight, the 20-year-old Hyderabadi will meet the winner of French Virginie Razzano and Shahar Peer of Israel.In the post-match press conference, Hingis said that one "can't let a player like her (Sania) run away in the first set like that," adding that she was physically and mentally tired in the third set while Sania got fresher.

Sania's victory comes a day after she broke into the top-30 of the WTA singles rankings, following her good performance at Cincinnati and San Diego in recent weeks.

In the latest WTA rankings released on Monday, Sania moved up one place to 30th, her highest ever singles ranking.

Sania, who was ranked 66 at the beginning of the year, last week made it to the quarterfinals at the 1.3-million-dollar Acura Classic women's tennis event in San Diego.

She lost the match to world number two and defending champion Maria Sharapova from Russia.

Sania, who is only second Indian to break into the top-30 after Ramesh Krishnan (ranked 23 in 1987), has 890 points. She now needs 340 more points to break into the top 20.

ANI