Associated Press

Dubai, March 2:

US Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova was eliminated 6-4, 6-2 by Indian wild card Sania Mirza, who also overcame an ankle injury in the Dubai Open second-round match on Tuesday. Mirza fell and hurt her left ankle in the third game, then was a point from dropping 5-0 behind in the first set.

But she won 12 of the next 14 games in routing the Russian, who was last year’s Dubai runner-up and had a first-round bye.

“I just zapped myself out there,” said Mirza. “Even though I couldn’t move so well, I hardly made any errors after 0-4 in the first set. I knew I couldn’t move so well, so I just decided to go for short points, attack, and get the winners.”

Also ousted was sixth-seeded Alicia Molik of Australia, the Qatar Open runner-up last weekend, and a first-round loser to Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia 7-6, 6-2.

Mirza became the first Indian woman ever to win a WTA Tour title last month. Ranked 90 spots below Kuznetsova at No 97, she produced stunning winners in her first-set comeback.

“To be honest, I didn’t think I could pull it off after being down 0-4, 30-40,” Mirza said. “My ankle was killing me and I was in a lot of pain. It took a couple of games to get used to the tapings, and for the painkiller to start working.”

After trading breaks at the start of the second set, Mirza broke Kuznetsova in the third and eighth games. Serving for the match, Mirza slipped to 0-40, but climbed back with two forehand winners, saved two more break points, and reached match point with a clinical backhand pass. Kuznetsova netted the next point to concede the match.

In the quarter-finals, Mirza will meet Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Montenegro, who won 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 over Silvia Farina Elia, the Italian who knocked out American Venus Williams.

Hantuchova rallied from 2-5 down in the first set to upset Molik, and set up a second-round match against Elena Likhovtseva of Russia, who needed nine match points to subdue Selima Sfar of Tunisia 2-6, 6-2, 7-6. Sfar, who became the first Arab woman to reach a WTA Tour quarter-finals at this tournament in her 2001 debut, broke Likhovtseva three times to win the first set, but lost her serve twice in the second.

Likhovtseva led 5-3 in the third but squandered six match points as Sfar rallied, breaking to love in the ninth game and forcing the tiebreaker, in which the Russian missed three more match points before edging it 7-5.

Also on Tuesday, seventh-seeded Nathalie Dechy of France beat Vera Douchevina of Russia 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, Li Na of China upset Ai Sugiyama of Japan, 1-6, 7-6, 6-2, Elena Bovina of Russia defeated Francesca Schiavone of Italy 6-1, 3-6, 6-4, and China’s Jie Zheng got past Spain’s Anabel Medina Garrigues 7-6, 6-2.