Sania mauls Molik, sails in semis at Hobart International

Hobart, Jan 10 (UNI) Continuing her winning spree, Sania Mirza tamed former world number eight and her doubles partner Alicia Molik in straight sets to sail into the semifinal of the 170,000 dollar Hobart International here today.

In a surprisingly one-sided match, Sania downed the Australian 6-4, 6-1 and the Indian would now meet winner of the quarterfinal match between top seeded Russian Anna Chakvetadze and seventh seed Jie Zheng of China in the semifinal tomorrow.

With this win at the Domain Tennis Centre, Sania advances to her first semi-final in an Australian WTA tournament.

Molik was ranked eighth in 2005 before an inner ear infection marred her career and though she is ranked 165th now, way behind Sania's 66th, the Bronze medallist at Athens Olympics was expected to match the Indian.

Sania, however, maintained her focus and grew in confidence with every game. Molik looked like giving a good fight in the first set but the Hyderabadi caught her on wrong foot on a number of occasions and Sania's dazzling groundstrokes left Molik clueless.

Sania claimed the lone service break of the first set in the seventh game to go one up and in the second, the Indian rattled off six games in a row to win in little over an hour against the Australian.

The Australian clearly threw in the towel in the second set with a rampant Sania bulldozing her way. Such was Sania's dominance that she dropped just one game on the way to seal the issue.

Sania and Molik had beaten the Ukrainian pair of Alona and Kateryna Bondarennko in the doubles first round and they take on second seeded Maria Elena Camerin (Italy) and Gisela Dulko (Argentina) in the quarterfinals later today.

UNI