Stosur beats Ivanovic in third round of LA Women’s Tennis Championships

Stosur beats Ivanovic in LA

CARSON, Calif. — Samantha Stosur defeated Ana Ivanovic 6-3, 6-2, in the third round of the LA Women’s Tennis Championships on Thursday.

Stosur, seeded 13th, needed 62 minutes to overcome the 2007 tournament champion and No. 6 seed.

Stosur broke Ivanovic’s serve in the eighth game of the opening set and three times in the second set and controlled the match.

Ivanovic defeated Stosur 7-5, 6-2, in the round of 32 at Wimbledon. But Thursday she struggled with her ball toss on serve throughout the match and said Stosur was “putting a lot of pressure on my serve. I think that was the big difference today because once we got into rallies it was pretty close.”

Stosur, a 25-year-old Australian has won 22 titles and is No. 5 in the world in doubles. Stosur and Rennae Stubbs are the top seeds this week, but she’s still looking for her first singles championship.

She’s been a runner-up four times and last week was a semifinalist at Stanford, where she beat Serena Williams. Stosur called the match with Ivanovic “a benchmark to see how quickly you can turn things around” after the loss at Wimbledon.

“I think it’s an accumulation of all the years I’ve been training for singles,” Stosur said of her recent success. “I’m playing a lot better, and more consistently as well, and matches like today’s certainly give me a little more confidence. I came out and started pretty well and played better and better as it went on.”

The win moved Stosur into Friday’s quarterfinals against the winner of Thursday night’s match between top seed and No. 1 Dinara Safina and No. 14 Zheng Jie.

Second seed Vera Zvonareva of Russia was a 7-6 (5), 4-6, 6-4 winner over Yanina Wickmayer of Belgium and will face No. 10 seed Flavia Pennetta, who beat fifth-seeded Nadia Petrova 6-3, 6-3. Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, the No. 8 seed, ousted Anna Chakvetadze of Russia 6-3, 6-2, and was joined in the quarterfinals by younger sister Urszula Radwanska, who advanced when No. 12 seed Li Na of China withdrew due to a right ankle injury.

Maria Sharapova was taking on Alona Bondarenko of the Ukraine and Sabine Lisicki of Germany was to face Sorana Cirstea of Romania in later matches.