Safina makes third round in straight sets

LONDON, June 25 (UPI) -- World No. 1 Dinara Safina was a steady straight-set winner Thursday in second-round play at the Wimbledon Championships in London.

No. 3-seeded Venus Williams, the event's two-time defending champion, and fifth-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova, who beat Safina for the French Open title this month, also took straight-set wins Thursday.

Safina advanced with a 6-3, 7-5 win over Rossana de los Rios that was a better performance than her first-round victory. While the scores were basically the same, Safina cut her unforced error total nearly in half from Tuesday and didn't allow de los Rios a break opportunity.

Williams dropped just six points on serve in a 6-3, 6-2 romp over Kateryna Bondarenko and ran her Wimbledon winning streak to 16 matches.

Kuznetsova needed just an hour to dispatch Pauline Parmentier 6-3, 6-2. Like Safina and Williams, Kuznetsova didn't face a break point Thursday.

Sixth-seeded Jelena Jankovic easily handled Iveta Benesova 6-2, 6-4 and No. 9-seeded Caroline Wozniacki took out Maria Kirilenko 6-0, 6-4 in their second-round matches.

In other matches Thursday involving highly seeded players 13th-seeded Ana Ivanovic and No. 15-seeded Flavia Pennetta each won in two sets, but 11th-seeded Agnieszka Radwanska needed nearly three hours to finish off a 6-2, 6-7 (6-8), 9-7 win over Shuai Peng.