US Open winner Clijsters, Kuznetsova into 3rd round; Nadal advances at Australian Open

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Clijsters, Kuznetsova, Nadal advance to 3rd round

MELBOURNE, Australia — U.S. Open champion Kim Clijsters took another step toward winning consecutive Grand Slams with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Tamarine Tanasugarn in the second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday.

The 26-year-old Belgian will next play No. 19 Nadia Petrova, one of the Russian women already into the third round along with French Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova, last year’s Australian Open runner-up Dinara Safina and Maria Kirilenko.

Defending champion Rafael Nadal converted five of his first six breakpoint chances in an emphatic 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 second-round win over Slovakia’s Lukas Lacko, extending his run to nine straight wins at Melbourne Park.

“I played a serious match. I think I played the match what I need to play,” said Nadal, a six-time Grand Slam winner. “I was playing, moving well in the beginning without mistakes, having with the control of the ball.”

No. 7 Andy Roddick had a heated exchange with the chair umpire over a line call after his 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 win over Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci, while No. 11 Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, the 2007 runner-up, beat Turkey’s Marsel Ilhan 6-3, 6-4, 7-5.

American John Isner had a 6-3, 7-6 (4), 7-5 second-round win over Louk Sorenson, who on Tuesday became the first Irishman to win a Grand Slam main draw match.

Clijsters won the U.S. Open in September in only her third tournament back from two years off the tour in which she got married and had a baby.

Despite her success at Flushing Meadnows, Clijsters said she still had plenty to prove, to herself and the other players on the circuit.

“My attitude doesn’t change because now I’m seen as one of the favorites,” she said. “To me, that doesn’t mean anything.”

The No. 15-ranked Clijsters won the last six games after an early service break in the second set against the 32-year-old Tamarine.

Clijsters improved to 20 wins and three losses since her comeback, a run in which she became the first mother to win a major since Evonne Goolagong Cawley at Wimbledon in 1980.

She beat former No. 1-ranked Justine Henin for the title at the Brisbane International on Jan. 9 in what was Henin’s comeback tournament after 20 months off the tour.

The Belgian pair will stay on track to meet in the quarterfinals here if unranked and unseeded Henin can get past Olympic gold medalist Elena Dementieva later Wednesday. Clijsters has reached the semifinals or better in her last five trips to Melbourne Park, and lost the 2004 final to Henin.

No. 16-ranked Yanina Wickmayer, a Belgian who didn’t get a seeding here because her suspension for a World Anti-Doping Agency “whereabouts rule” violation hadn’t been overturned before entries closed, reached the third-round with a 7-6 (2), 6-1 win over No. 12 Flavia Penneta of Italy.

Third-ranked Kuznetsova was first into the third round when she beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 6-2, 6-2. No. 2 Safina had a 6-3, 6-4 win over Barbora Sahlavova Strycova — saving four breakpoints in the last game before serving it out.

Kuznetsova, who has two Grand Slam singles championships — adding the French last year to her win at the 2004 U.S. Open — has a chance to reach the No. 1 ranking for the first time if she clinches the Australian Open title.

“Yes, definitely, I know all the way how to go — I’ve done it twice,” Kuznetsova said of her chances of winning a major. She’s never gone past the quarterfinals in Melbourne.

Safina has held the No. 1 ranking but never won a major. She next plays Britain’s Elena Baltacha, who has already equaled her best run at the season’s first major by reaching the third round with a 6-2, 7-5 win over No. 30 Kateryna Bondarenko.

No. 11 Marion Bartoli advanced, while China’s Zheng Jie won 2-6, 6-2, 6-3 over No. 24 Maria Jose Martinez of Spain.

In first-round matches carried over to Wednesday from the rain-interrupted opening days, No. 4 Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark, who lost the U.S. Open final to Clijsters, had a 6-4, 6-2 win over Canada’s Aleksandra Wozniak.

In other first-round matches, No. 7 Victoria Azarenka, No. 9 Vera Zvonareva, No. 16 Li Na, No. 22 Daniela Hantuchova and No. 29 Shahar Peer all advanced.

Serena and Venus Williams won in the doubles Wednesday, starting the defense of their Australian title with a 6-1, 6-1 win.

The sisters won their opening singles matches along with men’s No. 1 Roger Federer and No. 3 Novak Djokovic on Tuesday, Serena returning to Grand Slam play for the first time since her tirade against the line judge who called her for a foot fault during her U.S. Open semifinal loss to Clijsters.

And while the 11-time major winner did seem less effusive than usual in her 6-2, 6-1 win over 18-year-old Urszula Radwanska, she didn’t hold back about what she thought of the $82,500 fine.

“I don’t know whoever got fined like that. People said worse, done worse,” she said, “I think it was a bit much.”

Williams was warned she could be suspended from the U.S. Open for another “major offense” at any Grand Slam event in the next two years over the incident. Williams said she doubts whether one of the top men would have drawn such a fine.

“In tennis I think we’ve been able to do really well with having fought so hard to get equal prize money,” Williams said. “I think that’s really good,” she said. “But I think we still sort of, say, live in a man’s world. Some incidents can bring you back to life and back into reality.”