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Agassi, Venus march on at Melbourne

MELBOURNE, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Andre Agassi cruised to a straight sets win Wednesday morning at the Australian Open.

Agassi, the men's second seed, won 18 straight games on the way to a 6-1, 6-0, 6-0 rout of Hyung-Taik Lee of Korea. The match at Rod Laver Arena lasted only 80 minutes.

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Venus Williams, the other No. 2 from the United States, destroyed Ansley Cargill, a qualifier from the U.S., 6-3, 6-0, in 52 minutes.

No. 4 Carlos Moya of Spain became the highest-ranked men's seed to lose. The 1997 runnerup fell to Mardy Fish of the U.S., 3-6, 7-6 (10-8), 6-4, 4-6, 6-2.

Lee, who was the winner of last week's adidas International in Sydney, held his first service game and had three break points in the second, but that only awakened Agassi to the challenge.

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The three-time Australian Open champion lifted his game another notch at that point.

"How can you not when you play a guy of Lee's quality, playing as well as he's been playing,?" Agassi asked. "To go out there and have a score like that doesn't happen too often. So, needless to say, I feel great about everything."

Agassi, 32, had 26 winners, won 89 percent of his first-service points, and converted 9-of-14 break-point chances.

"I was hitting the ball with conviction," Agassi said. "My unforced errors were way down. My winners were up. The stats would show that I was playing aggressive tennis without missing a whole lot, so that's a great feeling. My game plan was to go out there and control the match. For it to go that way was certainly unexpected."

Williams played less than an hour for the second straight match. She hit 39 winners, staved off four break points while snatching Cargill's serve four times.

She did commit 28 unforced errors.

"I tried my best to get into a rhythm more than anything else, just hit a lot of balls and get a nice rhythm going," Williams said. "Really, that was my goal tonight, besides of course to be the victor. I definitely think it was much better (than the first match), a lot less errors. I was playing a lot of good points in a row. Also, I was able to start being aggressive because I was more consistent."

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Williams, 22, fell in the Australian quarterfinals last year, and lost in the finals at the French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open to younger sister Serena.

Williams has not lost before the quarterfinals in her four previous visits to Melbourne, and she beat Cargill in the first round last year.

"I think some of her best assets, she runs very well and she just tries till the very end," Williams said. "I think last year she came through the qualifying. This year, she did also. I suppose if we hadn't met tonight, she probably could have been able to get to the next round also. I think she's very good, actually."

No. 5 seed Justine Henin-Hardenne of Belgium also quickly reached the next round, needing just 48 minutes to annihilate Anna Kournikova, 6-0, 6-1.

Henin-Hardenne, a quarterfinalist at Melbourne last year, took advantage of a spate of unforced errors and Kournikova's weak serve to hand the popular Russian her worst Grand Slam defeat.

"It was hard (to keep concentration in the second set)," Henin-Hardenne said. "I played really well in the first set and didn't have a lot of mistakes. It's hard to stay focused because there weren't a lot of rallies. It was a difficult situation."

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She admitted that Kournikova's feeble serve posed certain problems.

"I just tried to stay focused on myself and go for the return," she said. "For sure, it was hard sometimes because it was a very slow serve, a lot of double faults. Sometimes it was just amazing."

Kournikova, a former top-10 player who had won her first match at a major in two years on Monday, committed 29 unforced errors and six double faults while producing just five winners. She was broken five times, and failed on her only break point.

"It was very hard to get into the match," said Kournikova, who has never won a set in four lifetime losses to Henin-Hardenne. "She started off playing really, really well. I was always on the defense. I had no weapons against her today. I tried to turn it around and find some kind of weakness in her game today, but there was just none."

Agassi extended his winning streak in Melbourne to 16 straight matches. He claimed the title in 2000 and 2001, but was forced to pull out on the eve of last year's event because of a wrist injury.

Bidding to become only the fourth player to capture four men's singles titles in the history of this event, the former world No. 1 had mixed feelings about his dominant display.

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"It's twofold," he said. "You have to know you can do it when you need it, but you don't necessarily need to do it until you need it. You hope you always play your best tennis in the best of situations. My experience in Grand Slam play is you can never predict how it's going to unfold. You don't want to spend more than you need to, but you do want to make sure you have what it takes when you do get pushed."

Meanwhile, No. 22 Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia, the 1999 champion trying to return from last month's vascular surgery, fell to Jarkko Nieminen of Finland, 6-3, 6-3, 3-6, 4-6, 6-1.

The women's champion three years ago, No. 9 Lindsay Davenport, overcame Uzbekistan's Iroda Tulyaganova, 6-7 (7-9), 6-4, 7-5.

"Sometimes you're definitely lucky to still be in the tournament, when you feel you don't play your best and you pull out a close match," Davenport said. "I'm very happy to still be around. Hopefully, it helps me play better later."

Davenport, 26, missed last year's event because of right knee surgery. She reached the final last week at Sydney, but has not won a title since 2001.

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12th-seeded Patty Schnyder also won, but casualties were No. 13 Silvia Farina Elia and No. 15 Alexandra Stevenson.

On the men's side, No. 4 Juan Carlos Ferrero was a winner, as was eighth-seeded Albert Costa, the reigning French Open champion.

Following Moya out of the event were No. 11 Paradorn Srichaphan of Thailand and No. 16 Sjeng Schalken of the Netherlands.

Srichaphan was upended by Australian Mark Philippoussis, 3-6, 6-1, 1-6, 7-5, 6-3, and Schalken was upended by 18-year-old Mario Ancic of Croatia, 6-3, 1-6, 6-7 (10-12), 6-4, 6-4.

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