Top seed Mara Santangelo enters second round

Bangalore, Feb 14 (UNI) Defending champion Mara Santangelo of Italy entered the second round, even as seeded players Bardina Vasillsa of Russia, Yung-Jan Chan of Chinese Taipei and Brianti Alberta of Italy were ousted in the Sony Ericsson International WTA Tennis tournament played at KSLTA statium here today.

Qualifier Yurika Sema of Japan, Obziler Tzipora of Israel and fourth seed Jelena Kostanic Tosic of Croatia entered the quarterfinals.

The 25-year-old Mara, ranked 33 in the world, won quelling a late challenge from Shengan Sun of China 6-2, 7-6(4). Mara breezed past Sun in the first set, but was made to sweat in the second set as she was taken to a tie-breaker. However, the defending champion proved her supermacy by winning the tie break with accurate serves.

Jelena, who had shown the door to wild card entrant Sophie Ferguson of Australia, had a cake walk against Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia, who had defeated another wild card Tara Iyer of India in her first round match. Jelena defeated Dominika 6-4, 6-1.

Melinda Czink of Hungary rallied back to beat sixth seed Yung-Jan Chan of Taipei after a two hour battle 1-6, 7-5, 6-2 to enter the second round.

(Eds: Here, pick up suitably from earlier series).

UNI