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Davenport charges on in Beijing
2007-09-20
Lindsay Davenport continued her remarkable return to tennis by beating Greek Eleni Daniilidou 7-5 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals of the China Open on Thursday. The former world number one needed to show some grit, however, coming back from 1-3 down in both sets to set up a last eight meeting with Russian fourth seed Elena Dementieva, a 6-2 6-0 winner over Austria's Tamira Paszek. Davenport, who has her three-month old son Jagger with her in Beijing, has now won seven matches out of seven since coming out of retirement with a tournament win in Bali last week. "She mixed it up a lot on me today," said Davenport, whose last match before taking 12 months off was at last year's China Open. "I got off to a slow start but in the end I was able to make fewer errors and force her to make errors that she wasn't making at the beginning. "I don't know why it's been going so well, it has felt easy but I think that's more to do with the fact that it's been fun and I've enjoyed it." World number 15 Dementieva, playing her first match on day four of the tournament, broke on Paszek's first service game and never looked back, wrapping up the victory in 51 minutes. Akiko Morigami won the all-Japanese tie against Aiko Nakamura 7-5 6-3 to take her place in the quarter-finals, where she will meet the winner of the last match of the day between second seed Jelena Jankovic and Virginia Ruano Pascual.
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