Moscow: Former world No 1 Caroline Wozniacki reached the Kremlin Cup quarter-finals after easing past Poland’s Urszula Radwanska 6-1, 6-3 on Wednesday.
The third seed from Denmark wasted five match points on her serve in the eighth game of the second set before finally ending the 29th-ranked Radwanska’s resistance a game later.
World No. 11 Wozniacki now takes on last year’s winner Dominika Cibulkova after the fifth-seeded Slovak beat Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria 6-2, 6-3 in the second round.
French second seed Marion Bartoli, however, suffered a 6-3, 6-0 thrashing by Sweden’s Sofia Arvidsson.
Bartoli, who had a bye in the first round, looked out of sorts on the hard indoor surface, committing 10 double faults and winning only 50 per cent of her first serves.
The world No 10 showed little resistance after losing the opening set and conceded the match with a half-hearted forehand into the tramlines after 75 minutes.
“Mentally I was fine but my body was just not reacting. I was feeling tired and exhausted and, of course, the surface was very slow so it didn’t help my game,” Bartoli told reporters.
“It was very difficult for me to beat her on this kind of surface because she likes to have time to get the ball back and she had all the time in the world here.”
Serbia’s Viktor Troicki, the men’s third seed who won here in 2010 and reached the final last year, was also knocked out, losing to 112th-ranked Tunisian Malek Jaziri 6-1, 3-6, 6-2.
In the quarter-finals, 46th-ranked Arvidsson, who beat Bartoli for the fifth time in seven matches, faces seventh seed Maria Kirilenko of Russia or unseeded Kazakh Yaroslava Shvedova.
Kirilenko beat compatriot Elena Vesnina 7-5, 6-1 in the first round on Wednesday, while Shvedova dismissed Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-2, 6-2.
Czech Klara Zakopalova became the first woman to reach the last eight of the annual indoor tournament after upsetting eighth-seeded compatriot Lucie Safarova 6-4, 6-4.
Australian top seed Samantha Stosur begins her campaign on Thursday against France’s Alize Cornet.