Oeiras (Portugal), May 1 (IANS): Top seeds Sania Mirza and Cara Black progressed to the Portugal Open women's doubles quarterfinals by overcoming Spanish-Chinese pairing Silvia Soler-Espinosa and Shuai Zhang here Thursday.
The Indian-Zimbabwean combine won 6-3, 6-4 in an hour and 10 minutes on the clay courts of Sports Complex of Jamor.
Though Silvia and Shuai broke their opponents once in the first set, the top seeds responded by converting two of the seven break points they earned.
The second set turned out to be even more difficult to hold on to service games as there was a total of five service breaks. But the Indian-Zimbabwean duo got the significant break needed to clinch the set and match.
Somdev Devvarman and Purav Raja/Divij Sharan play their respective men's singles and men's doubles matches later in the day.