Second seed Sania Mirza survived a scare from Australian Casey Dellacqua before beating her in a keenly-contested three-setter to advance to the quarterfinals of USD 175,000 Japan Open here on Wednesday.
Sania came through 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 after a few nervous moments in her second-round match of the tier III event.
After splitting the first two sets, Sania and Dellacqua played out an engrossing decider in which the Indian ace came out trumps to advance to the last-eight.

Venus in fine touch
Meanwhile, Wimbledon champion Venus Williams crushed fellow American Vania King 6-0, 6-4 to book a spot in the quarterfinals.

Former world number one Williams, who won the Korea Open title at the weekend, cooled off after a red-hot start but still had too much power for King, winning in just 66 minutes.

Ferrer  moves up
In the men’s section, top seed David Ferrer beat South African Wesley Moodie 7-6, 6-2 to reach the last 16 stage.
Ferrer takes on Vincent Spadea next after the American knocked out 14th-seeded Argentine Sergio Roitman with a 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 win.

Lleyton Hewitt breezed past Slovenia's Luka Gregorc 6-3, 6-3. The Australian plays Spain's Ivan Navarro in the last 16.  Russia's Dmitry Tursunov also advanced, with a comfortable 6-4, 6-3 win over Chilean Paul Capdeville.
Croatian Ivo Karlovic blew past Germany's Benjamin Becker by the same score to set up a third-round match against South Korea's Lee Hyung-taik.