Top seed Martina Hingis of Switzerland, No. 6 Monica Seles and ninth seed Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario of Spain -- former champions all -- advanced to the fourth round of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships today.
Hingis, the 1997 champion and the runner-up here each of the last two years, rolled past outclassed Italian Tathiana Garbin, 6-1, 6-0, in 37 minutes.
Seles, who won back-to-back U.S. Open titles in 1991 and 1992, was pushed to three sets by fellow American Chanda Rubin but prevailed 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.
Sanchez-Vicario, the 1994 champion, took control of her match with American qualifier Allison Bradshaw late in the first set and cruised to a 7-6 (7-2), 6-0 victory.
Third seed Venus Williams, a pre-tournament favorite who is looking to join the list of U.S. Open champions, struggled with her serve early but extended her winning streak to a WTA Tour season-high 22 matches tonight with a 7-6 (7-3), 6-1 win over fellow American Meghann Shaughnessy.
Hingis, seeking her first major title since the 1999 Australian Open, easily advanced to the Round of 16, beating Garbin by the same score as she did in the third round of this year's French Open.
"I was taking her very serious today even though I won the last time so easy," said Hingis, who has dropped only seven games in three victories here this week. "She had pretty easy wins in the first couple of rounds. I had to play well. That's what I did."
Hingis next will meet 11th seed Sandrine Testud of France, who recorded an equally impressive 6-0, 6-1 victory over Kristie Boogert of the Netherlands in 41 minutes today.
Seles, a former world No. 1 player, won consecutive games at love to go up 5-3 in the decisive set and closed out the match with a trademark crosscourt winner on her first match point.
"I was just trying to stay in the match," said Seles, who later admitted she was not feeling well during the match. "There's not much else I could really do. I just haven't felt that great all this morning. I just did not feel my legs at all today. It was really strange."
By winning, Seles did her part to set up a fourth-round meeting with 15th seed Jennifer Capriati for the second straight year. Capriati made it a certainty by defeating Adriana Gersi of the Czech Republic, 6-2, 6-3, today.
"Certain players, it's really strange, you never get to play," Seles said. "Jennifer and I have played a lot of matches, moreso here."
Seles, then 17, and Capriati, then 15, staged a classic semifinal battle here in 1991. They each endured off-court ordeals that sidetracked their careers in the mid-1990s but crossed paths again in last year's Round of 16. Seles won in straight sets.
"I'm not going to go in there and think that it is supposed to be some kind of epic battle," said Capriati, who this year at the Australian Open reached her first Grand Slam semifinal since the 1991 U.S. Open.
Sanchez-Vicario, also a former world No. 1, trailed 6-5 in the opening set, but Bradshaw lost momentum when her more experienced opponent forced the tiebreaker.
"The first set was pretty close," Sanchez-Vicario said. "Later, I think I played better and better. Once I started moving her, she had much more trouble."
The victory propelled Sanchez-Vicario into the fourth round, where she will meet eighth seed Nathalie Tauziat of France, a player she has dominated throughout her career.
Tauziat, a 6-3, 6-2 winner over Janet Lee of Taiwan today, is winless in 11 career meetings with Sanchez-Vicario.
Williams came out flat against the 48th-ranked Shaughnessy, who raced to a 3-0 lead and had a chance to serve out the set after breaking for a 5-3 advantage.
"I don't think it was a wake-up call at all," Williams said. "You expect people to come out and play well in a Grand Slam."
But Williams managed to break back to start a run of three straight games for a 6-5 lead. Shaughnessy would not let the set slip away as she broke Williams to force the tiebreaker.
Shaughnessy got a mini-break at 2-1 when Williams committed her sixth double fault of the set but proceeded to lose the next two points on serve to give Williams a 3-2 advantage. Williams won four of the next five points to pull out the one-hour first set.
"I could not stop putting serves in the net," said Williams, who committed 23 unforfced errors in the set. "There was a lot of pressure on my second serve. I had to stop thinking too much."
With Shaughnessy's best opportunity wasted, Williams cruised through the second set in 22 minutes to surpass Lindsay Davenport for the longest winning streak in women's tennis this season.
Williams earned her first major title earlier this summer at Wimbledon and has not lost since, winning her next three tournaments.
Next up for Williams will be Magui Serna of Spain, who eliminated No. 13 Amanda Coetzer of South Africa, 7-5, 7-6 (7-3), to reach the Round of 16 here for the second time in four years.
Williams lost to Hingis in the 1997 final, a defeat her younger sister, Serena, avenged with a straight-sets victory in last year's final.
Seeded fifth, Serena Williams advanced to the third round on Thursday night with a victory over Nadejda Petrova of Russia.
With four-time champion Pete Sampras getting an extra day's rest before his third-round match and top seed and defending champion Andre Agassi exiting at the hands of Frenchman Arnaud Clement Thursday, the men's second-round spotlight is on a host of seeded European players and former runners-up.
No. 3 Magnus Norman of Sweden, the highest seeded player left in the men's draw, earned his ATP Tour-leading 58th singles victory of the year today by defeating French qualifier Cyril Saulnier, 6-3, 6-4, 6-3.
The French Open finalist, who won his fourth title of the year last week at the Hamlet Cup on Long Island, has not dropped a set in his first two matches here and has won 14 of his last 17 matches overall.
Three other men's seeds had to go the distance to win their second-round matches.
No. 6 Marat Safin of Russia held off 35-year-old Italian Gianluca Pozzi, the oldest player in the men's draw, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4; 1993 finalist Cedric Pioline of France, the 10th seed, saved two match points and outlasted 1997 runner-up Greg Rusedski of Britain, 6-7 (4-7), 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (8-6), 6-3; and 12th-seeded Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero got past Argentina's Hernan Gumy, 1-6, 6-3, 6-7 (4-7), 6-2, 6-3.
Eighth seed Alex Corretja of Spain and No. 14 Nicolas Kiefer of Germany advanced to the third round with straight-sets victories earlier today. Corretja defeated Marc Rosset of Switzerland, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3, while Kiefer routed Sweden's Jonas Bjorkman, 6-1, 6-4, 6-3.
Tonight's match between No. 15 Mark Philippoussis of Australia, the 1998 runner-up, and up-and-coming American Jan-Michael Gambill was postponed due to rain and will be played Saturday.
Todd Martin ousted Olympic teammate Michael Chang, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4, in a match featuring a pair of unseeded Americans and former finalists.
Chang, a finalist here in 1996, held a 5-1 advantage in the head-to-head series entering the match, but could not mount a challenge against Martin's serve.
Martin, who lost to Agassi in last year's final, won 43 of 44 points on his first serve and faced only one break point in the match.
Agassi was stunned by Clement, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, Thursday afternoon, leaving the tournament without either of the top two men's seeds entering the third round for the first time since the Open era began in 1968. No. 2 Gustavo Kuerten of Brazil, the reigning French Open champion, was knocked off by Australian qualifier Wayne Arthurs on Tuesday.
With two-time winner Patrick Rafter also ousted in the first round, Sampras is the only former champion left in the men's draw. He'll face Agustin Calleri of Argentina on Saturday in the third round.