Tennis: V Williams struggles, Nadal cruises

Venus Williams struggled to a 7-6 (3), 6-3 victory over 16th-seeded Shahar Peer, while No. 2 Kim Clijsters cruised to a comfortable fourth-round win against Ana Ivanovic on the second straight windy day at the US Open.

Williams got only 48 percent of her first serves in at the Arthur Ashe Stadium. She faced six break points and lost three. She squandered five chances to wrap up the first set in a 22-point 12th game. As for her dress - a red "daytime" version of the black, sequined number she wore two nights previously - well, she spent much of the match tugging at it to keep it at barely high-thigh level.

"No," she said when asked if the dress bothered her. "The only thing that bothered me was when I didn't win the point, I think. That was it."

After the Williams match, No. 1 Rafael Nadal took the court and experienced no such trouble. He faced only one break point - and saved it, in the final game - in a 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 victory over Frenchman Gilles Simon. Nadal has gone 46-for-46 in service games through his first three U.S. Open matches.

In the fourth round, Nadal will play No. 23 Feliciano Lopez, who won when Sergiy Stakovshy retired with a toe injury. No. 10 Gil Ferrer and No. 8 Fernando Verdasco also advanced - meaning all four players left in Nadal's section of the draw are Spaniards.

Williams' next match is a quarterfinal against No. 6 Francesca Schiavone, who had few problems in a 6-3, 6-0 win over 20th-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Williams will probably need to play better to get past Schiavone after a match in which the two-time champion looked more like someone who was trying to find her form - which she is after missing most of August with an injured left kneecap - than someone breezing her way through the draw.

"We always have had very competitive matches, so I know it's not going to be something I just walk through when I play against her," Williams said. "I have to stay focused and ready to take every point or else she will. It was a good challenge."

Williams' next match is a quarterfinal against No. 6 Francesca Schiavone, who had few problems in a 6-3, 6-0 win over 20th-seeded Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Serving intelligently and handling Williams' power, Peer was surprisingly game, even though she fell to 0-6 lifetime against Williams and has yet to win a set. Trailing 6-5 and serving to stay in the first set, Peer staved off five set points before finally winning a game that took more than 12 minutes.

But Williams overpowered her in the tiebreaker to wrap up a first set that took 1 hour, 8 minutes.

"It's not new that I'm trying to win and fighting for every ball and hanging in there every point," Peer said. "But I do think it can give me more for the future, because every time I played Venus I had tough time and she was always kind of killing me every match."

While Williams is the only American woman left in the draw, the men have a number of options. No. 20 Sam Querrey pulled off a mild third-round upset, defeating No. 14 Nicolas Almagro 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. No. 18 John Isner had a match later Sunday against 12th-seeded Russian Mikhail Youzhny. And No. 19 Mardy Fish plays his fourth-round match Monday against No. 3 Novak Djokovic.

Other men's winners Sunday included No. 10 David Ferrer, who beat fellow Spaniard Daniel Gimeno-Traver in straight sets, and No. 8 Fernando Verdasco, a four-set winner over 31st-seeded David Nalbandian. It took 39 minutes to compete the first five games of the Verdasco-Nalbandian match.