Paris, May 29: Venus Williams and Jelena Jankovic reached the third round at the French Open on Thursday, one easing through her match and the other playing through pain.

The eighth-seeded Williams used a six-game run to beat 241st-ranked qualifier Selima Sfar of Tunisia 6-2, 6-4. Jankovic, seeded third and a semifinalist at Roland Garros last year, was bothered by a right arm injury but defeated Marina Erakovic of New Zealand 6-2, 7-6 (5).

Amelie Mauresmo, a two-time Grand Slam champion seeded 22nd, lost to Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain 6-3, 6-4. The Frenchwoman finished with 38 unforced errors and was broken five times.

American James Blake lost to 19-year-old Ernests Gulbis of Latvia 7-6 (2), 3-6, 7-5, 6-3.

"I wasn't going for the shots the way I normally do," Blake said.

No. 19 Alize Cornet, No. 26 Flavia Pennetta, No. 27 Katarina Srebotnik and No. 28 Dominika Cibulkova all advanced.

On the men's side, sixth-seeded David Nalbandian lost, falling to Jeremy Chadry of France 3-6, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1, 6-2. No. 30 Dmitry Tursunov advanced to the third round.

Jankovic called for a trainer after holding to lead 3-2 in the second set.

"It started gradually, little by little," the 23-year-old Serb told the trainer after grimacing through a massage. "It's humid, and the balls are big and heavy. We're not used to it."

Jankovic refused to get a bandage on her arm.

"I don't want tape because I cannot play with tape. Just massage it," Jankovic said. "I prefer to play with the pain."

Jankovic broke in the next game to take a 4-2 lead, but Erakovic broke back to 4-3 and held to 4-4. At 5-all, the pair again traded breaks, and the New Zealander led 5-3 in the tiebreaker but Jankovic won the final four points to advance.

Williams trailed 2-1 after being broken early in the first set, but she didn't drop another game until leading 1-0 in the second set. The American made 16 more unforced errors than Sfar, but made up for that with strong play at the net. Williams won the point on 24 of her 35 trips forward.

"I played well and I just tried to improve literally on every point I'm playing out there, just to play better every point, play better every match," Williams said. "Just naturally I feel like I get better every round, usually."

Top-seeded Roger Federer and three-time defending champion Rafael Nadal were to play in the second round.

With the light fading on center court Wednesday and Serena Williams facing the possibility of heading into a third set at the French Open, the eight-time Grand Slam champion started to get a little peeved.

She quickly took care of that problem.

"I didn't want to go three sets today," said Williams, who won the last four games to beat Mathilde Johansson of France 6-2, 7-5 in the second round at Roland Garros.

"I'm tired of playing so late and in the dark, and I was like, 'OK, I'm going to close it out before then,"' she added.

Joining Williams in the third round on Day 4 of the French Open was second-seeded Ana Ivanovic, who beat Lucie Safarova 6-1, 6-2.

The younger Williams, the only past women's champion competing at Roland Garros, has made it to the third round at 33 of the 34 major championships she's entered during her career. The only time she didn't was a second-round loss at the 1998 Australian Open in her Grand Slam debut.

Since then, she has won eight major titles. For a while now, she has faced players who want to make a name for themselves by beating her.

"Especially if they're younger, then they want to win," Williams said. "Everyone seems to want to beat me."

Johansson is only three years younger than the 26-year-old Williams, but she was playing in just her sixth Grand Slam tournament.

"Of course, I was nervous," said the Frenchwoman, who reached the second round at Roland Garros for the third straight year. "But I was not petrified."

Maria Sharapova struggled with her serve in the wind in her first-round match on center court, hitting 17 double-faults and barely managing to defeat 103rd-ranked Evgeniya Rodina 6-1, 3-6, 8-6.

The top-ranked Russian, trying to complete a career Grand Slam at the clay-court major, landed only 64 percent of her first serves in the match.

"I was very close to losing this match," Sharapova said. "Not many things were working for me today after the first set."

French Open women's singles results

Jelena Jankovic (Serbia) beat Marina Erakovic (New Zealand) 6-2 7-6(5), Flavia Pennetta (Italy) beat Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (Russia) 3-6 6-1 6-1, Petra Cetkovska (Czech Republic) beat Galina Voskoboeva

(Russia) 7-5 6-3, Venus Williams (U.S.) beat Selima Sfar (Tunisia) 6-2 6-4, Katarina Srebotnik (Slovenia) beat Ekaterina Makarova (Russia) 6-0 7-5, Iveta Benesova (Czech Republic) beat Peng Shuai (China) 6-4 6-3, Dominika Cibulkova (Slovakia) beat Milagros Sequera

(Venezuela) 6-3 6-0

Bhupathi out, Paes advances

Mahesh Bhupathi's campaign in men's doubles was cut short in the first round even though his estranged partner Leander Paes, partnering Lukas Dlouhy, advanced to the second round in the French Open here on Thursday.

Fourth seeds Bhupathi and Mark Knowles of Bahama could not do justice to their reputation as the went down 4-6 4-6 to the unseeded Austrian Stephen Huss of Austria and his German partner Ross Hutchins.

Ninth-seeded pair of Paes and Dlouhy, however, did not lower guard against unheralded Sanchai Ratiwatana and Sonchat Ratiwatana and beat the Thai twin 6-2 6-4 to move to the next round.

They would now meet the winner of the first round match where the Tomas Behrend-Tomas Cibulec pair meets Jose Acasuso and Sebastian Prieto.

Rohan Bopanna is the other Indian in the fray in men's doubles where he teams up with Pakistani Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi and faces top-seeded American brothers Bob and Mike Bryan in a difficult first round outing.