An out-of-sorts Amelie Mauresmo was sent tumbling out of the Australian Women's Hardcourt tennis tournament with a straight sets loss to Switzerland's Patty Schnyder.

Mauresmo dished up 10 double faults and had a poor 64 per cent first serve percentage in the 6-4 6-4 quarter-final loss.

World No.16 Schnyder raced to a 5-0 lead in the first set before her French opponent began to find her groove and won four straight games to trail 5-4.

Mauresmo eventually lost the first set but at least she began to seriously challenge Schnyder, who grabbed a crucial break of serve at 4-4 in the second set before closing out the match.

Former world No.1 Mauresmo's timing was astray as she miscued several groundstrokes and her serve was below par in the first set.

"I made it pretty hard on myself losing those first five games," the 2006 Australian Open champion said.

"Too many mistakes, definitely, especially in that first set.

"Of course I'm disappointed but I'll see what I have to work on for the next couple of weeks and go to Sydney hoping it'll get better and I'll be ready for Melbourne."

Schnyder's victory set up a semi-final clash with China's Na Li, who upset top seed Nicole Vaidisova in her quarter-final earlier.

"I'll definitely give my best (on Friday)," said Schnyder.

"I'm healthy and playing with confidence."

World No.12 Vaidisova refused to blame an ankle injury for her shock 6-3 6-3 loss to Li, who missed the second half of the 2007 season with a rib stress fracture.

The 18-year-old Czech needed a medical time-out after feeling a sharp pain in her left ankle when trailing 5-3 in the first set but Li was dominating the match up to that point.

"I don't think it's going to be something huge but it just distracts you," said Vaidisova of the untimely injury.

"She played a great game and she was up before that happened so it's definitely not my excuse for losing today."

The match of the tournament - and perhaps the year - so far featured Israeli Shahar Peer and defending champion Dinara Safina, who lost an epic quarter-final in a third set tiebreak.

Fifth-seeded Peer triumphed 4-6 6-1 7-6 (10-8) against her tall Russian opponent in a high-quality match that lasted two-and-a-half hours.

The world No.17 is only two places below Safina in the WTA rankings and it showed on centre court today as there was little to split the pair.

Safina had several chances to win the match but blew five match points - three in the 10th game of the deciding set when she led 5-4 and two in the tiebreak.

Peer exacted revenge for last year's semi-final loss against Safina at Royal Pines Resort where she led 6-4 5-1 before crumbling in the third set following a rain delay.

"You can call it revenge but not really," remarked Peer, who saved seven from 10 break points on the way to beating Safina for the first time in four attempts today.

"Revenge is a little bit more when you hate somebody and I don't hate Dinara."

The 20-year-old Peer will meet Victoria Azarenko in Friday's semi-finals after the Belarusian defeated Slovakia's world No.51 Dominika Cibulkova 6-1 3-6 6-3 in Thursday's second quarter-final.

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