Sania Mirza, playing her first competitive match since a long injury lay-off, along with her Italian partner Francesca Schiavone reached the doubles quarter-finals of the USD 220,000 WTA Hobart International tournament in Hobart on Monday.
The fourth seeded Indo-Italian pair defeated Latvian Liga Dekmeijre and Turkey's Ipek Senoglu 7-6 (4), 6-4 in the first round of the hard court event.
It took Sania and Schiavone one hour and 24 minutes to carve out the hard-fought win.
Sania-Francesca converted two of the seven breakpoints in the first set while saving four. In the second set, they broke their rivals thrice while dropping their serve twice.
Meanwhile, Shikha Uberoi and Germany's Jasmin Woehr lost their first round match 6-7 (4), 7-5, 6-10 to the Russian-American pair of Natalie Grandin and Abigail Spears.
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