Tennis: Fast-working Jankovic and Hingis Hit the Ground Running

The Serbian top seed, Jelena Jankovic, and third-ranked Slovak Daniela Hantuchova enjoyed contrasting opening-round wins in the Auckland Classic yesterday as the various antipodean warm-up events to the Australian Open, the season's first grand slam, gave players a chance to move up a gear.

Jankovic, the world No12, had little trouble in disposing of Germany's Julia Schruff 6-3, 6-4 while Hantuchova was tested by her 17-year-old compatriot Dominika Cibulkova before winning 6-1, 3-6, 6-2. "The first set I played great, but after that I sort of relaxed a little bit too much," Hantuchova said. "In the third I started to focus again."

Martina Hingis marched into the quarter-finals of the Australian women's hardcourt championships on the Queensland Gold Coast with a 6-0, 6-1 demolition of Australia's Nicole Pratt. The world No7 and top seed gave Pratt little hope, dominating with her superior movement and speed at the back of the court to book a place in the last eight against Colombia's Catalina Castano.

Dinara Safina, the second seed, trounced Elena Likhovtseva 6-3, 6-2 and then took a swipe at her fellow Russian's tactics after Likhovtseva took numerous breaks for a foot injury. "I don't think she had anything - I don't believe in these games," said Safina, the 20-year-old sister of Marat Safin. "She may be really hurt but if it really happened then why was she still running on the court? Maybe she just wanted to disturb me."

Serbia's Novak Djokovic cruised through his opening match in the Adelaide International tournament, losing just one game to the Czech Jan Hajek. The 19-year-old top seed needed just 57 minutes to see off Hajek in his first match in the event, which is testing the ATP's new 32-player round-robin format.

Richard Gasquet enjoyed an equally emphatic start to the tournament, the 20-year-old Frenchman requiring less than 50 minutes to sweep past Germany's ninth seed, Florian Mayer, 6-2, 6-1. The third seed, Radek Stepanek, got his 2007 campaign off to a woeful start with defeat at the hands of the American Vince Spadea. The Czech, who recently became engaged to Hingis, went down 6-4, 6-4.

Dominik Hrbaty has no chance of making it into the last eight after a second defeat in two days. After losing to the home wildcard entry, Peter Luczak, on Monday, the Slovak fell 6-2, 7-6 to the American Paul Goldstein. Lleyton Hewitt opened his 2007 campaign with a win, albeit after his Serbian opponent, Janko Tipsarevic, had to retire in the second set.