Second seed Jelena Jankovic made a ruthless start at the China Open WTA tournament on Thursday as she eased past Virginia Ruano Pascual from Spain 6-0, 6-0 in the second round at the Beijing Tennis Centre.
The burgeoning Serb, who became the highest ranked seed after Russian world number two Svetlana Kuznetsova announced withdrawal one day earlier, will in the quarterfinals meet Akiko Morigami who won an all-Japanese clash beating Aiko Nakamura 7-5, 6-3.
The world number three has enjoyed a magnificent season to date, securing four titles, including the Tier I events in Charleston and Rome, and rising to a career-high ranking of No. 3.
In her previous appearance at the 600,000 U.S. dollars tournament, Jankovic made a run all the way to the semifinals.
But the most attention was still on the American comeback mum Lindsay Davenport, who continued the stunning winning streak with a convincing 7-5, 6-3 victory over eighth seeded Greek Eleni Daniilidou.
The former world number one needed to show some grit, however, coming back from 1-3 down in both sets to set up a last eight meeting with Russia's fourth seed Elena Dementieva, a 6-2, 6-0 winner over Austrian Tamira Paszek.
One of the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour's all-time greats, Davenport capped a stellar return to action last weekend, winning the Commonwealth Bank Tennis Classic singles title in Bali. It is a mere three months since she gave birth to her first child.
"She mixed it up a lot on me today," said Davenport, who is now on a seven-match roll since the Bali return.
"I got off to a slow start but in the end I was able to make fewer errors and force her to make errors that she wasn't making at the beginning.
"I don't know why it's been going so well, it has felt easy but I think that's more to do with the fact that it's been fun and I' ve enjoyed it," added the 31-year-old, who have not played a single event between last September and this August, let alone a singles event until just last week.
World No. 15 Dementieva revenged her Wimbledon round of 32 defeat to Paszek as she has produced some impressive groundstrokes to break the Austrian six times out of the eleven
opportunities.
"I lost to her in the Wimbledon, so this time it gave me a chance to prove myself," the 25-year-old Russian said. "Today I play solid and aggressive game and I never gave her chance to play long rallies."
"I have met her (Davenport) many times, she is a great player," Dementieva said of her next opponent Davenport, "it is not an easy job playing against her even after she quit for quite a long time, so I will play good tennis to get her running on court."
Source: Xinhua
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