Wozniacki focused on the prize

Tennis: Top seed Caroline Wozniacki wasted no time, on another hot and sunny day at the US Open, in beating the heat with a …

Tennis:Top seed Caroline Wozniacki wasted no time, on another hot and sunny day at the US Open, in beating the heat with a 6-0 6-0 whitewash of unseeded Chang Kai-chen of Taiwan to reach the third round.

Wozniacki, runner-up last year to Kim Clijsters, barely broke a sweat as she hurried off the Arthur Ashe centre court after just 47 minutes against Chang, ranked 84th.

The 20-year-old Dane, who has a 16-1 record since Wimbledon with titles in Copenhagen, Montreal and New Haven, has dropped only two games at Flushing Meadows, beating American wildcard Chelsey Gullickson 6-1 6-1 in the first round.

Against Chang, Wozniacki registered only seven winners as she chose to work on grooving her groundstrokes while waiting for her 19-year-old opponent to misfire.

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Chang, who lost in straight sets to Wozniacki in the second round at Wimbledon, won only 24 points in the match and committed 26 unforced errors including seven double faults.

Wozniacki, who also won at Ponte Vedra Beach this season, is gunning for her first grand slam singles title.

She would also prosper greatly with a Flushing Meadows triumph since she is eligible for a $1 million bonus by taking the title as overall winner of this summer's US Open Series.

The world number two has not been tested yet at the National Tennis Center, but faces a potential fourth-round showdown with Russian Maria Sharapova, the 2006 Open winner.

Wozniacki will face another Taiwanese player in the third round in Chan Yung-jan, who advanced against Tamira Paszek of Austria.

Former champion Svetlana Kuznetsova produced a far stronger performance than in her first round win over Japan's Kimiko Date Krumm, with a routine 6-2 6-3 win over Latvia's Anastasija Sevastova.

Kuznetsova was taken the distance by Date Krumm, but today the Russian's biggest challenge against a nervy Sevastova was the heat.

The pair met just once before, at the same stage of the same tournament last year. The outcome was also the same as Kuznetsova won in straight sets.

Their second meeting did not set pulses racing, which was made all the more apparent by the raft of empty blue seats at the Louis Armstrong Stadium.

Sevastova looked overawed by the enormity of the venue and the occasion as she stepped out on court and was in danger of losing her opening service game. But against the run of play, she held on and broke the subsequent Kuznetsova serve to move into a 2-1 lead.

That was her last lead of the match as number 11 seed Kuznetsova, US Open winner in 2004 and a finalist in 2007, mixed up her play nicely and showed she might be turning into a genuine contender for the title in New York.