Russia's Maria Sharapova advanced to the second round of the LA Women's Tennis Championships by defeating Slovakia's world No.60 Jarmila Groth 6-0 6-4.

Sharapova said after the match that Groth's plan was to attack from every possible angle. However, Sharapova returned many of those balls, and advanced despite being inconsistent in the second set.

World No.61 Sharapova will next face third seed Victoria Azarenka.

BTW: The winner last week at Stanford, Marion Bartoli, withdrew from the LA Women's Tennis Championships due to a right calf strain. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)

The Williams sisters, seeded second, have won their third doubles title of the season, beating Chan Yung-Jan of China and Monica Niculescu of Romania 6-4 6-1 in the final of the Bank of the West Classic.

Serena's and Venus' two previous 2009 doubles titles came at the Australian Open and Wimbledon.

Shortly before winning in doubles, Venus had lost to Marion Bartoli 6-2 5-7 6-4 in the singles final. (photo via Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

World No.14 Marion Bartoli of France beat seven-time Grand Slam champion and world No.3 Venus Williams 6-2 5-7 6-4, after 2 hours and 43 minutes of play in the final of the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford.

Bartoli took the first set and had a 5-3 lead in the second set, but didn't manage to end the match then, and Wililams won the set 7-5 to take the encounter to the decider.

Bartoli established a 2-0 lead in the third set, but Williams later leveled at 3-3. Bartoli then broke Williams once again, the break which turned out to be crucial, as all the following games went with serve and Bartoli capitalized on her first match point, in the 10th game of the third set.

The last year’s Stanford finalist won her fifth WTA singles title and second this year, while Williams has now lost her fifth out of seven finals at the tournament.

As for the prize money, the winner earned $107,000 and the runner-up $56,000.

Additional info: Venus Williams is scheduled to play doubles final later today, partnered with sister Serena Williams, and against the pairing of Yung-Jan Chan and Monica Niculescu. (photos courtesy of Colleen and Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

Russian fifth seed Vera Dushevina won her first Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles final, in her fourth attempt, crushing eighth seed Lucie Hradecka of the Czech Republic at the Istanbul Cup.

World No.49 Dushevina handily defeated world No.70 Hradecka in just 41 minutes, with the final score 6-0 6-1. Dushevina won a total of 51 points compared to Hradecka’s 16, and has even earned the honor of losing the least games en route to a title this year.

Hradecka is now 0-3 herself in Tour singles finals, also having finished runner-up at Bad Gastein in 2008 and Strasbourg this year.

Reminder: No.1 seed Vera Zvonareva and No.2 seed Patty Schnyder lost in the first round of the Istanbul Cup, No.4 seed Aravane Rezai lost in the second, while seed No.3 Anabel Medina Garrigues fell to Dushevina herself in the quarterfinals. (photo via: Sony Ericsson WTA Tour)

World No.3 Venus Williams is now just one step away from her third Bank of the West Classic title, having reached her seventh final at the tournament. Her opponent in the title match will be last year's finalist, France's Marion Bartoli.

The second-seeded Williams crashed third seed Elena Dementieva 6-0 6-1 and scored her ninth win, and sixth straight, in 11 career encounters with the Russian.

In the other semifinal, eighth seed Marion Bartoli won a see-saw match against Samantha Stosur 6-3 1-6 6-1. Bartoli took control of the deciding set by winning four games in a row en route to the two-hour, four-minute victory.

Williams and Bartoli have met only once before, in nothing less than the final of Wimbledon, and the American won 6-4 6-1.

Additional info: Along sister Serena, Venus Williams is also competing in the doubles final at Stanford. (photo courtesy of our reader Colleen)

Top seed Serena Williams and fourth seed Jelena Jankovic fell in the quarterfinals of the Bank of the West Classic in Stanford.

Williams lost to Australian Samantha Stosur 6-2 3-6 6-2, while Marion Bartoli solidified her "I always beat her" statement by defeating Jankovic 3-6 7-6(3) 6-3.

Williams was holding double break point for a 3-2 lead in the third set, but Stosur fought them off to win that game and then barely looked back winning all the following games. Stosur has thus claimed her equal best career win, having beaten then-world No.2 Dinara Safina at Miami.

Stosur's opponent in the semifinals will be Bartoli, as Jankovic didn’t have her revenge for the comments and fell to the eighth seed despite holding double match point in the second set. Bartoli even came back from a break down in the deciding set to beat Jankovic for the fourth time in their last five matches.

Second and third seeds Venus Williams and Elena Dementieva are safely through to the semifinals. Williams crushed Maria Sharapova 6-2 6-2, and Dementieva defeated Daniela Hantuchova 6-2 6-4.

Stosur won her only previous meeting with Bartoli, but it was three years ago. As for the other semifinal pair, Williams has won eight of her 10 encounters with Dementieva. (photo by our reader Colleen)