Hingis cruises into last eight

Martina Hingis wasted little time in reaching the quarter-finals of the $565,000 Los Angeles women's Classic on Wednesday routing Russian Elena Likhovsteva 6-3 6-0 in just 53 minutes.

While the top seed and world number one looked in fantastic form in her third-round match, the second and third seeds, Lindsay Davenport and Kim Clijsters, struggled to advance from their second-round encounters.

"It was pretty good from the beginning," Hingis said. "She was always a little bit late on her shots, but a miss is a miss."

While Hingis improved her career mark to 7-0 against the 15th seed, Davenport needed two tiebreaks to see off Russia's Nadia Petrova 7-6 (7-3) 7-6 (7-3), and Clijsters of Belgium overcame pesky Cara Black of Zimbabwe 4-6 6-3 6-1 in a one hour, 38-minute baseline tussle.

Others advancing to third round included seventh seed Elena Dementieva of Russia, who was given a walkover when Kristina Brandi withdrew due to right wrist tendinitis during practice.

She was joined by 12th seed Amy Frazier, who dismissed Slovakian Janette Husarova 7-6 (7-5) 6-4.

In the night feature match, fourth-seed and two-time defending champion Serena Williams takes on Australia's Nicole Pratt.

Davenport was pleased to get past the hard-serving 38th ranked Russian on a day when the two-time Los Angeles title holder looked and felt sluggish.

"I'm a little bit tired for whatever reason," said Davenport following the one hour, 43-minute triumph. "I think it's probably more mental than anything. Although playing four matches in Stanford, four matches in San Diego and to come back here for another tournament is tiring."

Davenport was happy with the straight sets victory over Petrova, who fired down eight aces -- two more than the winner, but committed five costly double faults.

She claimed the opening set as she ran off five of the final six points in the tiebreaker.

In the second set, Petrova double-faulted away two games but pushed Davenport to another tiebreaker.

Knotted at 3-3, the American ran off the last four points and claimed the victory when the Russian committed her final double fault on match point.

"I was able to get good leads in the tiebreaker," Davenport said. "Maybe she lost form a bit when she got to the breaker. It seemed like a couple of errors came into her game. Sometimes you have to do it the hard way."

Clijsters, meanwhile, shook off the loss of the opening set to overcome the scrappy Black for the second time in three weeks.

Clijsters, who was pushed to three sets against Black en route to winning the Bank of the West title two weeks ago, was again taken to the limit before coming out on top.

"I'm happy to win," said Clijsters, who has risen to a career-high number five world ranking.

"She started aggressively and served really well in the first set. I tried to raise the level throughout the second set and played well."