Zvonareva reaches Pan Pacific tennis quarters

Tokyo: Vera Zvonareva reached the quarter-finals for the first time in Tokyo when she whipped Roberta Vinci of Italy in the Pan Pacific Open women`s tennis tournament on Wednesday.

The Russian second seed, who reached her career highest at fourth in the world after finishing runner-up at the US Open, took the last seven games in a row to score a 6-4, 6-0 victory in the third round. In her previous two visits to Tokyo Zvonareva lost in the first round both times, to Samantha Stosur of Australia in 2007 and to Alisa Kleybanova of Russia last year. "Overall I think I played a good match, but there is still room for improvement, particularly with consistency. I need to be more consistent and I didn`t show my best today, but I played well when I needed to," said Zvonareva. "The conditions were different today, the roof was open and it was windy and we had to get used to the conditions which affected both our games throughout the match, but overall, I am happy with the way I played," she added.In the quarter-finals on Thursday Zvonareva will play Beijing Olympic gold medallist Elena Dementieva of Russia, seeded seventh, who had to come back from an early service break down to beat Italy`s Flavia Pennetta 6-4, 6-2. In other third-round action, Marion Bartoli of France abandoned her match due to viral illness when she lost the first set 2-6 to Victoria Azarenka of Beralus, eighth seed.American Coco Vandeweghe became the only qualifier to reach the quarter-finals when she outclassed Julia Goerges of Germany 6-3, 6-0. Bureau Report