Bangalore: Second seeds Sania Mirza and Mara Santangelo were beaten 4-6, 6-3, 5-10 by fourth seeds Su-Wei Hsieh (Chinese Taipei) and Alla Kudryavtseva (Russia) in the doubles semi-final at the WTA Bangalore Open on Saturday night.

Italian Santangelo, however, made the singles final outplaying Olga Savchuk of Ukraine 6-1, 6-0. The top seed and defending champion will meet Yaroslava Shvedova of Russia, who defeated Israel’s Tzipora Obziler 7-5, 6-2 in an encounter between two unseeded players.

Santangelo dropped service in the third game of the opening set, but did not concede any point to the unseeded Savchuk during the 46-minute contest.

“I was surprised to come out so easily,” said Santangelo. “Savchuk has a very strong backhand so I mostly attacked her forehand and it worked very well,” she said.

Shvedova, 19, who ousted second-seeded Sania Mirza in the quarter final, struggled as she dropped her initial two service points against Obziler.

Leading 5-3, Obziler had two set points when she served at 40-15 before Shvedova staged a remarkable rally by clinching four successive points.

“I didn’t know what was happening, but tried to keep the ball in the court,” said Shvedova. “I still can’t believe that I’m in the final.”

Obziler’s game fell apart from the moment she failed to seize the opportunity in the ninth game and lost her rhythm in the second set.

Qualifying for the semi-final here will place Obziler into the WTA Tour’s top-100 for the first time in her career when the fresh rankings are released Monday. (AP)