Venus advances

Defending champion Venus Williams breezed back into the Wimbledon quarter-finals with a painfully predictable 6-3 6-4 victory over Russian 18-year-old Alisa Kleybanova on Court Two today.

Williams set about her task with brisk efficiency and her world-ranked 42 opponent seldom showed signs of rising to the occasion as she struggled to maintain parity with her opponent’s searing ground-strokes.