World No. 1 Martina Hingis advanced to the quarter-finals of a 565,000-dollar WTA hardcourt tournament last night by breezing past hometown favourite Alexandra Stevenson 6-1, 6-3.
Hingis, a semi-finalist here last year, won in 55 minutes despite Stevenson's claim it would be a fight.
The Swiss star will next face Japan's Ai Sugiyama, who advanced 6-3, 4-1 when Australia's Nicole Pratt retired with a jammed right ankle.
Third seed Jennifer Capriati defeated Yugoslavia's Jelena Dokic, 6-2, 6-4, in 48 minutes, winning nine of 10 games in one stretch to take a 4-1 second set lead.
The reigning French and Australian Open champion trailed, 4-3, in the first set before her taking command of the match.
Capriati will face seventh seed Monica Seles, in a rematch of their memorable 1991 final, in which a 15-year-old Capriati won in a third-set tie-breaker.
Seles advanced with a 6-4, 6-1 victory against fellow American Meghann Shaughnessy in 61 minutes.
In other third-round matches, Lindsay Davenport started off strong, but then had to fight off Barbara Schett, 6-1, 7-5, to reach a quarter-final match-up against France's Sandrine Testud, who ousted eighth-seeded Russian Elena Dementieva, 6-2, 6-4.
AFP