Five Seeds Through to Quarters Wednesday at WTA Istanbul

Posted on May 19, 2005

All five seeds in action moved through to the quarterfinals on the clay Wednesday at the WTA stop in Istanbul in (2) Nicole Vaidisova (d. (Q) Abramovic), (3) Anna Smashnova (d. Hopkins, baking a breadstick and bagel), (5) Anna-Lena Groenefeld (d. Gagliardi), (7) Anna Chakvetadze (d. Panova from a set down), and (8) Mashona Washington (d. (Q) Vesnina).

"I wasn't too happy with the way I was playing today," said the 16-year-old No. 2 seed Vaidisova. "I had a good warm-up this morning, so I thought I was going to play better. I made some silly mistakes, especially serving for the first set, but I'm in the quarterfinals so I just hope I play better tomorrow, because I will need to if I'm going to win."

Two un-seeds also advanced into the quarterfinals in Israel's Shahar Peer (d. Morigami from a set down), and Bulgarian 17-year-old qualifier Tszvetana Pironkova (d. Fedak from a set down), playing in her first WTA event.

"I can't believe that I won again today," Pironkova said. "This is my first WTA event and to beat two players as good as Shaughnessy and Fedak is more than I thought I could do. But now I'm in the quarterfinals and I hope I can keep going."

Thursday's QF match-ups in Istanbul are (8) Washington vs. (3) Smashnova, (1) Venus vs. (7) Chakvetadze, (5) Groenefeld vs. (2) Vaidisova, and Peer vs. (Q) Pironkova.