16 January 2014 | Tennis Queensland

Gold Coast product Samantha Stosur remains on pace for a quarterfinals berth at the Australian Open after convincingly defeating Tsvetana Pironkova 6-2 6-0 Wednesday night.

The game was completed in one hour and seven minutes, a relatively quick fashion for Stosur as playing minimal time in the heat would have played a factor in the rout.

All the power was behind Stosur as she tallied up an extra 18 winners than Pironkova, who was clearly battling through injury despite her impressive nine match win streak form.

Stosur’s result led a mixed bag of Aussie play as Lleyton Hewitt and Pat Rafter were handed a tight 6-4 7-5 loss by American Eric Butorac and South African Raven Klaasen in the mens doubles.

Matthew Ebden also bowed out of the tournament after losing in four sets to Canada’s Vasek Pospisil last night.

17 Australian’s take the court on Thursday headlined by Thanasi Kokkinakis playing Spaniard Rafael Nadal and Sam Stosur playing with Russian doubles partner Svetlana Kuznetsova. For full results please visit ausopen.com.

Nick Kyrgios also faces 27^th seed Benoit Paire of France tonight plus the 5 seed tandem of Casey Dellacqua and Queenslander Ashleigh Barty in the doubles will be looking for a win over Russian Alex Panova and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic.

For the complete coverage of the Australian Open this summer head over to http://www.ausopen.com/index.html.