Hingis cruises to easy victory in Hamburg

Martina Hingis has cruised through to the quarter-finals of the WTA tennis tournament in Hamburg. She defeated Austria's Sylvia Plischka in two sets.

Martina Hingis had an easy time in her second round match. She lost four games to Austria’s Sylvia Plischka before taking the first set. By the second she was well into her stride, conceding just one game to win the match 6-4, 6-1.

Her compatriot, Patty Schnyder, didn’t fare so well. She put up a valiant fight in her first round match against Magui Serna of Spain, losing the first set 4-6, before coming back to take the second 6-1.

With everything hanging on the third, both players gave their all, eventually taking the set to a tie-break. Schnyder hung on for seven points before conceding the match 4-6, 6-1, 6-7 (7-9).

This week has been one Switzerland’s players would rather forget. On Wednesday, George Bastl was knocked out of the $500,000 ATP tennis tournament in Mallorca, losing his second round match to Sweden’s Mikael Tillström in just two sets.

His defeat was mirrored the day before by fellow compatriot, Marc Rosset, who fell to Brazil’s Fernando Meligeni in the BMW Open in Munich.

Switzerland’s third men’s player, Lorenzo Manta, crashed out in the first round of the $350,000 clay tournament in Orlando on Monday. He was beaten in three sets by Argentina’s Martin Rodriguez.

Defeat was also waiting in the wings for Switzerland’s Emmanuelle Gagliardi. She fell to fifth-seeded Corina Morariu of the United States in the $170,000 Croatian Ladies Open WTA tournament.

All the attention is now focused on Martina Hingis, who will be hoping to regain the world number one spot, which she recently lost to her American rival, Lindsay Davenport.

swissinfo with agencies