California Jul 20: Christina McHale of the United States held off Japan's Misaki Doi 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 at the Mercury Insurance Open on Thursday, advancing to a quarterfinal against No. 1 seed Marion Bartoli of France.
McHale, the No. 5 seed, needed three match points in the last game before she closed out the second-round match when Doi hit a backhand into the net.
McHale faced 19 break points, but Doi only converted three.
“I have to give credit to Misaki because she played really, really well. She made it hard for me,” McHale said. “For my next match, I'm going to have to serve a lot better. I'm just happy that I found a way to pull it out.”
In another second-round matches second-seeded Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia was a 6-2, 6-4 winner over New Zealand's Marina Erakovic and Ursula Radwanska of Poland cruised to a 6-2, 6-1 win over lucky loser Melanie Oudin.
Radwanska, the younger sister of world No. 2 ranked Agnieszka Radwanska, served well and took advantage of the American's poor serve to control the match.
“Yeah, I was playing very good, and especially I was serving good,” said Radwanska, who will represent Poland at the Olympics. “Probably that was the key because I was holding my serve.”
Radwanska, who won 88 percent (23 of 26) of her first serves, reached the quarterfinals for the second straight week. She lost last week at Stanford to eventual runner-up CoCo Vandeweghe.
