Kolkata: Sania Mirza edged out Germany's Sandra Kloesel in straight sets to move into the quarter-final of the $ 175,000-WTA Sunfeast Open on Thursday.
The fifth-seed Indian ace hovered between a slew of blazing winners and a series of unforced errors before playing a superb second set to show the exit door to Kloesel with a 7-5 6-3 scoreline at the Netaji Indoor Stadium.
Sania will now take on fourth-seed Aravane Rezai of France on Friday for a place in the last four.
With the 5,000-odd crowd rooting for her, Sania improved upon her performance last year, when she went down to Hungarian Melinda Czink in a second round battle.
In the opening set, Sania's serve completely deserted her, as it did her opponent, with service breaks becoming a regular occurence.
The two players traded breaks in the first two games before Sania demolished the world No 123 in the third game to go ahead.
The next four games went with serves before Kloesel snatched Sania's serve in the eighth.
Despite beginning with an ace, Sania made several errors to drop serve on the third break point as the German levelled at 4-4.
However, the 19-year-old Hyderabad girl played a good ninth game, earning applause with a deft backhand passing shot and following it up with a clinical volley to break her opponent.
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