Capriati answers in Williams style

Serena Williams strolled into the third round of the US Open yesterday and looked as though she was happily keeping her head while those around were losing theirs and blaming it on her and sister Venus.

Again sporting a figure-hugging black catsuit which required more bravery than fabric, Williams disposed of Dinara Safina 6-0, 6-1 in 40 minutes. Safina is best known as Marat Safin's little sister and she might well have needed his help to stop Williams; it took the Russian 28 minutes to win a game.

The widening gap may be troubling for their rivals but neither Serena nor Venus seems to care a jot. As Serena grinned: "I'd rather be at this end of the stick than the other end. I prefer to have all easy matches, that's a no-brainer."

As world No4 Jelena Dokic should be within striking distance of the Williams but yesterday she looked anything but, losing 6-3, 6-2 to Elena Bovina in the second round.

"I just wasn't on today," sighed Dokic. "I felt fine but I just had one of those days when nothing is right. Everything I hit she was hitting back. She played well and she didn't give me a chance to come back."

As if the Williams' sisters on-court supremacy was not enough, their father has also been indulging his habit of making mischief in the press. Williams Sr has helpfully suggested that Jennifer Capriati ought to listen to her father more and stop swearing on court. "If Jennifer listened to him and stopped acting ignorant, she'd be all right," Richard Williams told Inside Tennis magazine.

Williams' unsolicited advice has done little to improve Capriati's sullen mood of late and in the early hours of yesterday she took some of her simmering fury out on poor Bethanie Mattek.

The American qualifier left the court, after a 6-0, 6-0 drubbing, with her self-esteem in tatters. "I'm not out there to feel sorry for anybody," snapped Capriati. "She's got to learn. It will make her tougher."

Capriati then rounded on Richard Williams. "You can see how ignorant that sounds and how disrespectful that sounds," she said. "I don't need his advice."

Capriati stopped just short of attacking his daughters but that appeared to take an awful lot of self-control. "There's a lot of other things that make this game besides them," she said.

There is no doubt that their dominance on the court rankles quite enough without Williams Sr adding insult to injury. "He gets away with it, it's no class," she said. "I've never said anything personal. You know, I could say things about them but I'm not going to lower myself to that."