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Serena, Radwanska advance at U.S. Open

3:13 PM, Sep 1, 2012   |    comments
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Flushing Meadows, NY (Sports Network) - Serena Williams and Agnieszka Radwanska were among the third-round winners Saturday at the U.S. Open.

Williams, a three-time champion at Flushing Meadows, overcame a somewhat slow start in the first set and rolled from there in a 6-4, 6-0 victory over Russia's Ekaterina Makarova.

The second-seeded Radwanska, who lost to Williams in the final at Wimbledon earlier this summer, notched a 6-3, 7-5 triumph against former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic of Serbia. Radwanska has matched her best result in six previous U.S. Open visits, as she also reached the fourth round in 2007 and 2008.

Next up for the 23-year-old Polish native will be Italy's Roberta Vinci, who advanced Saturday with a 6-2, 7-5 win over Slovakia's Dominika Cibulkova.

Williams is trying for her 15th career Grand Slam title and second of the year. She won at Wimbledon for a fifth time in July and followed that up with titles at Stanford and the Olympics before dropping a quarterfinal match against Germany's Angelique Kerber in Cincinnati last month.

The fourth-seeded American star was the Open runner-up last year to Samantha Stosur and has not won the title since 2008. She beat Jankovic for that year's championship in New York, and Jankovic -- a budding star at the time -- hasn't really been the same since.

After ascending to the world's top ranking that summer, Jankovic has not come close to that status. In each of the subsequent 16 Grand Slam events, only once has she been past the fourth round -- a semifinal appearance at the 2010 French Open.

Williams, who finished off the second set of her match Saturday in a mere 32 minutes, will next face the winner between 14th-seeded Russian Maria Kirilenko and Andrea Hlavackova of the Czech Republic.

The Sports Network