Hingis hurries and Mauresmo motors

Tennis: If the ease with which the top players advance through the first seven days is an indication of how these two weeks will go for them in Paris, Martina Hingis would have a grin on her face like the cat that got the cream. Again the Swiss 12th seed was delayed for only two sets.

Always wonderfully miserly, the former world number one afforded her Czech opponent Zuzana Ondraskova only one game in the first set and three in the second.

As befits her standing of being the number one tennis player in the world, Amelie Mauresmo also continued to make an impression, this time against Jelena Jankovic. In another two-setter, Mauresmo polished off her 21-year-old opponent 6-3, 6-3.

Venus Williams, coming back after a succession of injuries, took more time but she also closed the deal in two sets against the Croatian Karolina Sprem.

Sprem was famously Williams's opponent two years ago at Wimbledon, when umpire Ted Watts made one of the biggest errors of his career.

He mistakenly gave Sprem a point that she didn't earn in the final tie-breaker of her second-round match with the American. The error made it 2-2 in the tiebreaker but amid total confusion everywhere but on the court, neither player brought the mistake to his attention.

Nor did any linesman advise Watts of his gaffe and it carried through. Watts took no further part in that year's competition.

During a first-round match at Amelia Island in 2002, Watts was also in the chair for a match between Anne Kremer and Jennifer Hopkins in which the groundsman for the clay courts had mistakenly laid the lines for the service boxes three feet short. After Hopkins and Kremer combined for 29 double faults, they finally questioned the dimensions and complained to the WTA Tour supervisor that the lines might be too short.

They were. Kremer had asked in mid-match for someone to measure the boxes but said Watts told her, "It's okay, play on."

As it went there were no such controversies as Williams, although carelessly dropping her serve three times, took the first set 7-5 and the second with a great deal more ease.

During the 6-3 second set, Sprem asked for the trainer to be called when she found it difficult to catch her breath but later said it was not a factor in the result as Williams showed a little more of her old self in the closing stages.

"This match was definitely a challenge," said Williams. "I knew that going in because she had nothing to lose and she'd just come out swinging as hard as she could."

Williams has played Roland Garros for the last 10 years but has never won the tournament, her best effort coming in 2002 when she lost in the final.

Not to be outdone, Kim Clijsters drummed Conchita Martinez Granados out of the tournament, beating her to love in the first set and to three in the second.

The fourth seed, Maria Sharapova, sped through her first set against Alicia Molik 6-0, in front of the former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, and took the second set 7-5.