Overcoming a cramp, Sania Mirza rallied to beat Japan’s Akiko Morigami 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7-5) in a marathon battle to enter the second round of the $ 600,000 Bank of West Classic tournament here.
The Indian will take on sixth seed Tatiana Golovin of France in the second round of the hardcourt event being played on the Stanford University campus. In a see-saw contest lasting more than two hours, Sania forced a third-set tie-breaker against Morigami last night to come through in front of over 3,000 cheering fans.
Morigami took control early in the match capitalising on three critical breaks to take the opening set. Sania had her back against the wall in the second set as she trailed 3-5.
But she got her act together after that and won four straight games to tie the match at one set apiece. The world No. 35 carried the momentum into the third set and took a 2-1 lead. Both the players then held serves forcing a third-set tie-breaker.
Sania has teamed up with Israel’s Shahar Peer in doubles and the duo will open their campaign against Tatiana Poutchek and of Belarus and Anastasia Rodionova of Russia.

Amritraj in round II
Prakash Amritraj overwhelmed French sixth seed Nicolas Tourte 6-2, 6-3 to enter the second round of the $ 50,000 Challenger Series tournament in Granby, Canada.
Prakash, who reached the semi-finals of the Comerica Challenger at California last week, will next take on Canadian qualifier Milan Pokrajac in the hard court event.
Meanwhile, at the $ 25,000 Nottingham Challenger, sixth seed Rohan Bopanna beat British wildcard David Rice 6-4, 6-1 to enter the second round. Bopanna will now be up against German Lars Burgsmuller.
The Indian made a good start to his doubles campaign as well and, teaming up with Pakistani Aisam-ul Haq Qureshi, beat Xavier Audouy (France) and Simon Rea (New Zealand) 7-6 (7-4), 6-2 in the first round.