Serena powers in to round three at Wimbledon
Williams showed few signs of weakness in her game against Groth
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By James Christie. |  |
Wednesday, 24, Jun 2009 10:10
Serena Williams has secured a place in the next round at Wimbledon after cruising through her second round encounter in under an hour.
The second seed had too much power for Australian Jarmila Groth and took the match 6-2 6-1.
Groth held serve in her opening service game but had few answers to Williams' serve, which was rarely threatened in the opening set.
Williams gained her first break in the fourth game of the first set with a well-placed backhand down the line.
A second break came as Groth served to stay in the first set, but three double faults from the Australian handed the set to Williams.
Two more double faults in the second game of the second set gave Williams another break, which she then added to in the fourth game before serving out for the match.
Elsewhere, Belarussian eighth seed Victoria Azarenka enjoyed a perfect outing on Court Two, beating Romanian Ioana Raluca Olaru 6-0 6-0.
Fourth seeded Russian Elena Dementieva is also through to the third round after beating France's Aravane Rezai 6-1 6-3.
Dementieva performed much better than in her opening match of the tournament and breezed through the first set with three breaks of serve.
Rezai managed to get a break of her own at the start of the second set before Dementieva levelled and then carried that momentum through the next three games to seal the match.
Along with Maria Sharapova's exit, three other seeds also fell today.
Jie Zheng, the 16th seed was beaten 6-3 7-5 by Daniela Hantuchova, 27th seed Alisa Kleybanova was beaten 0-6 6-4 6-1 by fellow Russian Regina Kulikova and 31st seed Pavlyuchenkova lost 6-4 7-6 (8/6) to Roberta Vinci of Italy.