Shahar Pe’er cruised into the second round of the Italian Open in Rome on Monday, defeating local wild-card Corinna Dentoni 6-2, 6-1 in just over an hour.
Pe’er is seeded No. 16 in the $2,000,000 event and faces a possible third round meeting against No. 4 Venus Williams.
The top eight seeds have first-round byes in this clay-court warmup for the French Open, which starts in three weeks.
Nine of the top-10 ranked players are in action at the tournament – No. 8 Samantha Stosur withdrew following her defeat by Justine Henin in the final of the Porsche Grand Prix on Sunday.
Also Monday, Bethanie Mattek-Sands beat United States Fed Cup teammate Melanie Oudin 6-1, 6-3 in the opening round.
Mattek-Sands won key singles and doubles matches back-to-back to leadthe Americans to a 3-2 win over Russia in the Fed Cup semifinals eightdays ago and she maintained that form against Oudin.
Meanwhile,the opening day of the Israel Open at Ramat Hasharon was adisappointing one for local players. Noam Okun, Amir Weintraub andGilad Ben-Zvi, who all received wild cards to the event, were all sentpacking after the first round.
Dudi Sela, who climbed nineplaces to No. 58 in the world on Monday, will play his first roundmatch on Tuesday against Grigor Dimitrov.