World No. 1 Dinara Safina continued to bulldoze her way through the French Open draw when she flattened France’s Aravane Rezai 6-1, 6-0 yesterday to reach the quarter-finals.
The Russian will next face either ninth seed Victoria Azarenka of Belarus or defending champion Ana Ivanovic of Serbia, seeded eighth, for a rematch of last year’s final.
Safina, who has now dropped only five games en route to the last eight, left a sunbathed Center Court barely sweating after 53 minutes.
PHOTO: AFP
The Russian’s impressive run falls just short of the record of Mary Pierce, who conceded four games en route to the Paris quarter-finals in 1994.
For a few minutes it seemed that Safina, gunning for a maiden grand slam title, would not have it all her way against Rezai. The Frenchwoman had two break points in the third game but then ran into a brick wall as all her groundstrokes started rebounding back to her side of the court faster.
Safina shrugged off the first break point with a service winner and Rezai sent a backhand wide on the second.
The Russian, who has only lost once on clay this season, went on to break for 3-1 after benefiting from two double faults by Rezai.
Safina mixed her game with sliced backhands to further unsettle the world No. 57 and broke again for 5-1 with a forehand down the line, following on serve to pocket the first set.
Rezai managed only nine points in the second set as Safina peppered the court with groundstroke winners and bagged another straightforward victory on her first match point when the Frenchwoman netted a backhand.
In the men’s singles, Fernando Gonzalez became the first player to reach the quarter-finals by beating Victor Hanescu of Romania 6-2, 6-4, 6-2 yesterday.
Gonzalez, who reached the 2007 Australian Open final, ended the match with his 21st forehand winner.
He finished with 50 winners and only 16 unforced errors.
No. 20 seed Dominika Cibulkova reached the quarter-finals in the women’s draw.
The 20-year-old Slovak beat No. 29 seed Agnes Szavay of Hungary 6-2, 6-4 in a sloppy match that had a combined 17 winners and 66 unforced errors.
Cibulkova won five straight games in the second set to lead 5-2, but she was broken while serving for the match and had to wait to serve again and set up her first major quarter-final.
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