By Chris Oddo                          Photo Credit: Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty

(March 1, 2012) Two-time champion and six-time finalist Flavia Pennetta isn’t the only Italian that enjoys the posh digs at the Fairmont Acapulco Princess resort.
 

No. 1 seed Robert Vinci and No. 3 seed Sara Errani took a page from the Pennetta playbook when each advanced to the Abierto Mexicana semifinals in straight sets on the red clay today.
 

Vinci’s 6-2, 6-0 win over Dutchwoman Michaella Krajicek took only fifty-seven minutes, with Vinci saving all four break points that she faced and winning a whopping sixty-five percent of the points. Errani’s 6-4, 6-3 victory over lucky loser Estrella Cabeza Candela took an hour and forty minutes, but in the end it was yet another Italian triumph.

 

Vinci and Errani will meet in an all-Italian semifinal on Friday. Neither has surrendered a set in their first three matches.

 

Flavia Pennetta also continued her run of good fortune at Acapulco. The recently-turned-30-year-old defeated Columbian qualifier Marino Duque-Marino 6-0, 6-4. The Columbian made things interesting by breaking Pennetta as she served for the match, but Pennetta returned the favor to close out the 66-minute affair.

 

The 2005 and 2008 Abierto Mexicano Telcel champion, who has won more matches in Acapulco than in any other place over the course of her career, will face Irina-Camelia Begu in the other semifinal Friday. Begu, still in search of her first tour title, blasted Slovakian Magdalena Rybarikova, 6-1, 6-2.

 
Dubs Love:

 

Italians were hot on the doubles court as well. Errani and Vinci, Australian Open finalists just over a month ago, teamed up to make the semifinals with a 6-4, 6-2 win over fellow Italians Alberta Brianti and Maria Elena Camerin.

 

Last year’s singles champion Gisela Dulko and her famously unretired partner Paola Suarez also advanced to the semifinals with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Darija Jurak and Mariya Koryttseva.

 

Dulko had to withdraw from the singles draw do to illness.