Her left knee heavily wrapped, the third-seeded Williams defeated Bethanie Mattek-Sands 6-4, 6-2, in a much easier match than she had two nights before when she fell behind a set before rallying against Vera Dushevina.
She hurt the knee in the opener, but if she was still in pain in the second round, her opponent couldn’t tell.
“She was moving like a cat,” Mattek-Sands said.
Two-time major champion Amelie Mauresmo fell 6-4, 6-0 to Aleksandra Wozniak. Mauresmo recently turned 30 and is also thinking about retirement, though she won’t commit to a decision.
“The thing I don’t want to do is make the decision to stop and then after two, six, eight months think, it was not quite the time yet,” Mauresmo said. “Because then it’s too hard, I would say, probably to make a comeback as Kim is making now, given the age.”
Kim Clijsters, who came back to the U.S. Open after a long break with an easy win Monday, had a second-round match Wednesday afternoon against 14th-seeded Marion Bartoli.
Other seeded winners from early action Wednesday were No. 7 Vera Zvonareva, No. 18 Li Na and No. 31 Elena Vesnina. No. 10 Flavia Pennetta also won 6-0, 6-0 over Sania Mirza — the first double-bagel of this year’s tournament.
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