Venus Williams wins too in Olympic tennis

BEIJING -- About half an hour after Serena Williams advanced to the third round of the Olympic tennis tournament, her sister, Venus, joined her Tuesday with a 6-1, 6-4 victory over the Czech Republic's Iveta Benesova.

Except for Rafael Nadal, who won his first-round match in three sets, none of the top-seeded players have been challenged.

It's not very compelling tennis. Perhaps the round of 64 should be cut to 16 in 2012 in London.

In doubles, Lindsay Davenport and Liezel Huber beat Poland's Klaudia Jans and Alicja Rosolska, 6-2, 6-1.

--Randy Harvey

Photo: Venus Williams as she prepares to serve to Iveta Benesova of the Czech Repubic at the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Credit: Charles Krupa / Associated Press

Comments

[Mike]

I saw Serena's clinical deconstruction of my countrywoman Sam Stoeser. She's going to be tough to beat out for the gold.

On an unrelated note, Im looking at the medal table to the right of this article. What's the rationale between the US on 6 golds being ranked first and China with 10 being ranked second?

If you are going by total medals won then it's a pretty flawed system. I don't see the NBA ladder with the team with the most baskets being on top. Would we want a team that's won 10 bronzes to rank above 9 golds? I don't think so.

[DD]

Hasn't the medal table always been calculated by total? Hence, "Medal count" and not "Gold medal count."

To take a flawed analogy further, the NBA standings aren't calculated by "quality wins" or "wins against playoff teams"--they're calculated by all wins.