Mauresmo, Clijsters Advance in Sydney

SYDNEY, Australia - Martina Hingis was the first seeded casualty of the Tier II Medibank International on Monday but she'll now be joined on those sidelines by four more seeds, after the second round took place Tuesday. Amélie Mauresmo, Kim Clijsters and Nicole Vaidisova all moved into the quarterfinals. AHDEREL

Two of the four seeds that did not make the quarterfinal cut, No.2 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova and No.4 seed Nadia Petrova, were forced to stop with injury reasons. Kuznetsova retired after dropping the first set to Katarina Srebotnik, 62, after a troubling bout with an upper respiratory tract infection; Petrova retired once down 62 42 to Ana Ivanovic due to an abdominal strain.

"Yesterday I felt ridiculous; today I felt better so I decided to try," Kuznetsova said. "Definitely I will play Australian Open. If I feel a bit like this I will push myself and maybe I will have to retire again. I am really motivated to play. If I am the same way as I am today I won't. But if I get better, I think I should. It's impossible I stay like this one more week. It's not that serious."

No.6 seed Elena Dementieva was handed what was probably the most dramatic defeat of the day, falling to China's Li Na, 36 61 75. Dementieva served for the match at 5-4 in the third set and even had match point but Li kept her fighting spirit strong and eventually earned her third career Top 10 victory.

No.7 seed Patty Schnyder was also ousted, 76(3) 62, by Israeli teen Shahar Peer. Peer was 0-2 against the ninth-ranked Swiss coming into the match; she collected her second Top 10 scalp, having beaten Dementieva at Roland Garros in 2006.

Hingis, who was the No.5 seed here, was ousted on Monday by Jelena Jankovic; Jankovic kept her win streak alive with a 62 76(2) victory over Samantha Stosur.

"I think she has one of the best serves in women's tennis," said Jankovic of the Australian. "It was so tough for me to break her but sometimes I was lucky and I framed the ball. It was a tough match for me, but I gave it my best."

"I think she'll be Top 10 probably by the end of the week," commented Stosur on world No.12 Jankovic. "At the moment she's playing with so much confidence. She had a great last six months of last year, and she won last week in Auckland, and she just feels like she can't lose, which is hard to play against, as well."

Three seeds into final eight

Mauresmo, the top seed, was given a scare in her first match of the year but was able to prevail over Tatiana Golovin, 67(4) 75 61. It was an almost identical score to their only prior encounter, a 67(5) 75 62 win for Mauresmo at Paris [Indoors] last February. In both matches, the craftier Mauresmo hung tough with Golovin through the first two sets then took complete control in the third.

"She gave me lots of trouble and maybe had opportunities to win the match," Mauresmo said. "But it's the kind of match that's good for you. You can only get better, and it's good for the confidence. Physically I seemed to be all right in the third set, so a few positive things and a few things to keep working on."

"It was pretty much my first really tough match against one of the best players; I definitely had a lot of opportunities," Golovin stated. "I think I'm going to really learn from this match to be able to go after and beat the top players."

Clijsters, seeded No.3, and Vaidisova, seeded No.8, enjoyed relatively easy wins to reach the quarterfinals. The Belgian drubbed Australia's Nicole Pratt, 61 62, while the Czech did nearly the same to Ukrainian qualifier Yuliana Fedak, 63 61.

"It's always nice to have these kinds of matches at the start of a tournament," Clijsters said afterwards. "I'd played Nicole a few times in the past. When you play against her you have to be patient and wait for the right shot to go for a winner, and in the past I feel I didn't always do that. When you keep trying to hit the ball hard and go for winners on a lot of her shots, she plays better."

Wednesday's quarterfinals feature two first-time meetings, between Clijsters and Peer, and Li and Srebotnik. Mauresmo is 3-0 against Jankovic although their last match ended in a third set tie-break, at Beijing last September. Ivanovic ousted Vaidisova in their only prior meeting, at Miami in 2005.