Venus to face Serena in last 16

NEW YORK—Serena and Venus Williams set up another all-in-the family clash after both scored straight sets victories in the third round of the US Open.
Serena saw off Francesca Schiavone of Italy 6-3, 6-4, and then watched older sibling Venus win 6-3, 6-3 for for an eighth victory in as many games against Daniela Hantucheva of Slovakia.
Sunday’s fourth round encounter will be the second time the pair have met this year, with Venus winning in straight sets in Miami in March.
Prior to that, Serena had won six in a row including the 2003 final at Wimbledon the last time they met in a Grand Slam tournament.
They have twice met in the US Open final in 2001 when Venus won and the following year when Serena won, but only in the first of their 14 official WTA meetings, at the Australian Open in 1998, have they met earlier than the quarter-finals.
Wimbledon champion Venus said of the clash with her Australian Open champion sister: “There’s going to be a lot of hard hitting, a lot of hard serving. We’ll both have a few tricks up our sleeves”.
On another day of the top players dominating their opponents in the women’s draw, No. 1 seed Maria Sharapova and tournament favourite Kim Clijsters also scored comfotable straight sets victories.
Sharapova cuffed unseeded German Julia Schruff 6-2, 6-4 and has lost just nine games in three rounds as she campaigns for her second Grand Slam title after last year’s unexpected Wimbledon triumph.
She next takes on Sania Mirza after the Indian starlet had balanced 45 winners against 49 unforced errors in defeating France’s Marion Bartoli 7-6 (7/4), 6-4.
The Russian will start a huge favourite in the first meeting between the two 18-year-olds, but she said she would be taking her threat seriously.
“It’s going to be another tough one,” she said. “I haven’t really seen much of how she plays. I heard she’s got a big and powerful game. You just have to go out there and see how it goes”.
Clisters, who won three out of the four buildup tournaments ahead of New York, breezed past Jaapanese veteran Ai Sugiyama 6-1, 6-4 and into a fourth round tie against unseeded Venezuelan Maria Vento-Kabchi.
Also moving through to the last 16 were Russian ninth seed Nadia Petrova and up-and-coming Czech Nicole Vaidisova.
In the men’s tournament, third seed Lleyton Hewitt set up a third round meeting with big-hitting American Taylor Dent, but he needed to dig deep at times to see off an unexpectedly stern challenge from Jose Acasuso.
The Argentinian, trying to adapt his claycourt game to the demands of hardcourt tennis, took the third seeded Australian to tie-breakers in the opening two sets, but lost both of them to fall 7-6 (8/6), 7-6 (7/3), 6-2.
Turning to Dent whom he beat in four sets at Wimbledon this year, Hewitt said: “I know what I am going to get. I just need to go in with the right game plan”.—Agencies