By Jilawatan

Top seed Sania Mirza marched into the quarterfinals of the $175,000 Oldum Brown VanOpen with a comfortable straight sets win over American Laura Granville, 6-2, 6-4.

Granville, a two time former finalist at Vancouver, has seen her ranking plummet to 401 from a career high 27 back in 2003. Granville missed 13 months of tennis last year due to a wrist injury not too dissimilar to Sania’s . However the tour veteran was no match for the sheer power of young Mirza’s groundstrokes today, and apart from a late flurry in the second set, barely put up a fight.

Sania will rather unusually for her be the ‘non-fan favourite’  as she squares off against Vancouver local Rebecca Marino in the quarters. Marino used her big serve to overpower no.8 seed Olivia Rogowska of Australia 7-5, 7-6 (0) in her second round match earlier today.

In the first match of the morning, another Canadian Sharon Fichman upset the No.3 seed Madison Brengle of the US 6-2, 6-2 to start off the day in perfect fashion for the home fans. They will have plenty to cheer for on Friday as 5 of the 8 quarter-finalists are Canadian.

In the men’s draw Xavier Malisse and Taylor Dent were both victorious in second round matches. The former ATP Tour winners will now meet in a quarter-final Friday. Malisse, coming off a title at a Challenger event in Granby, QC last weekend, beat Ste-Foy, Quebec’s Pierre-Ludovic Duclos 3-6, 6-0, 6-4 while Dent beat fellow American Ryan Harrison 6-3, 6-3. Other winner’s Thursday included American Tim Smyczek who beat Kyu Tae Im of Korea 6-0, 6-1, Lester Cook of the U.S. who was a 7-5, 1-6, 7-5 winner over Marco Chiudinelli of Switzerland and Great Britain’s Alex Bogdanovic who bounced American Scoville Jenkins 3-6, 7-6, 6-4. Among the highlighted Friday quarter-finals is a match-up of Vancouver’s Philip Bester taking on third-seed Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus.