There were victories for both Williams sisters at the Family Circle Cup as Venus followed up her successful comeback in Miami last week by cruising into the second round in Charleston. Venus, who spent seven months out before returning at the Sony Ericsson Open last week, cruised past Iveta Benesova 6-4 6-3 as she lost serve only once in the match. “My serve felt great,” Williams told the WTA website. “I was still adjusting to the surface. Every clay court plays differently, the stadium can play different from the grandstand, I hadn’t played on stadium yet, and you don’t really slide a lot on that court anyway, so I was just getting the feel of the footing. But it was a good start.” However, Venus will now face a tough test in the second round where seventh seed Jelena Jankovic awaits.
Sister Serena was already in second-round action today, and made light work of Russian Elena Vesnina as she won 6-3 6-4. Also in the second round, second seed Samantha Stosur saw off wild-card Jamie Hampton 6-0 7-5 while Russian Vera Zvonareva had an even easier time in seeing off Kateryna Bondarenko 6-1 6-1. Eighth-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova had to come from behind to beat Eleni Daniilidou 3-6 6-4 6-4 but there was no way back for number 10 Anabel Medina Garrigues, who exited with a 7-5 6-3 loss to Anastasia Rodionova.
The remaining first round matches saw number 12 Yanina Wickmayer, 13th seed Nadia Petrova, and number 17 Marina Erakovic, advance along with Varvara Lepchenko, Anna Tatishvili, Jill Craybas, Anna Tatishvili and Yaroslava Shvedova
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