Williams, Sharapova advance to women's singles third round at Wimbledon

Top seed Serena Williams and fifth seed Maria Sharapova advanced to the women's singles third round after defeating South Africa's Chanelle Scheepers and Switzerland's Timea Bacsinszky respectively at Wimbledon.

Williams needed only 49 minutes to advance to the third round as she defeated Scheepers 6-1, 6-1, while Sharapova defeated Backsinszky 6-2, 6-1.

According to the BBC, Sharapova said that the win was tough as there were a few close games but she was happy with the way she stepped up, adding that she had been a bit nervous coming into the first round and knew that she needed to start better as Bacsinszky had a good first-round win.

Sharapova added that Court One is special to her so she is happy that she settled in after the first round and took it from there.

Meanwhile, Williams said that it is tough for her, every week she is always the favourite and that can be pressure, but she added that she can deal with it and would rather be looked at that way.

Williams will next face 25th seed Alize Cornet from France in the next round after she beat Petra Cetkovska of the Czech Republic 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.

Serbian Ana Ivanovic has also advanced to the third round after defeating China's Jie Zheng 6-4, 6-0 and would face last year's beaten finalist Sabine Lisicki from Germany.

Eugenie Bouchard, the 13th seed from Canada, also advanced after a 7-5, 6-1 win over Spain's Silvia Soler Espinosa while last year's semi-finalist Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium defeated another Spaniard Lourdes Dominguez Lino 6-2, 6-1.

However, one seed to fall was Spanish 15th seed Carla Suarez Navarro, who was beaten 7-6 (14-12), 5-7, 6-2 by Kazakh player Zarina Diyas, the report added.