Tuesday, 12 August 2008

Williams sisters turn on the power

Serena and Venus Williams powered on towards a likely gold medal showdown with easy second-round wins in the Olympic singles on Tuesday.

Serena needed just 44 minutes to blow away Australian Samantha Stosur 6-2 6-0 on day three of the tennis tournament.

Shortly afterwards on Centre Court Wimbledon champion Venus was not quite as ruthless but still had far too much for Czech Iveta Benesova, winning 6-1 6-4.

China's Zheng Jie raised the decibel level on Court One when she delighted a partisan crowd by fighting back to beat Spain's Nuria Llagostera Vives 6-7 6-1 6-4 in a match lasting three hours in soaring temperatures.

The recent Wimbledon semi-finalist now plays sixth seed Dinara Safina after the Russian reached the third round with a 7-6 6-1 defeat of Spaniard Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez.

"It was clean," fourth seed Serena, who next faces France's Alize Cornet, told reporters. "I played really clean matches in the past and the next one would be kind of streaky. I don't want to do that any more."

Serena and Venus, winners of 15 grand slam singles titles between them, are in opposite sides of the draw and with seeds tumbling they look destined to meet in the final.

After Russian third favorite Svetlana Kuznetsova's defeat by China's Li Na on Monday, two more women's seeds fell.

Slovak Daniela Hantuchova, seeded 10, was beaten by Denmark's Caroline Wozniacki 6-1 6-3 and Pole Agnieszka Radwanska, the eighth seed, lost a tense battle against Italian Francesca Schiavone 6-3 7-6.

China now have just two players left in the women's singles after Peng Shuai's 6-2 6-2 defeat by 15th seed Cornet.

In the men's singles, Frenchmen Gael Monfils and Gilles Simon reached the third round, although the main focus is on the evening session and the clash between Australian Lleyton Hewitt and soon to be world number one Rafael Nadal.

Top seed Roger Federer of Switzerland is up against El Salvador's Rafael Arevalo, ranked 447th in the world.

American duo Bob and Mike Bryan launched their Olympic bid with a 6-2 6-1 defeat of Bahamians Mark Knowles and Devin Mullings.

(Editing by Ed Osmond)

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