WTA: Sharapova, Venus notch wins in Istanbul

Istanbul, Turkey (Sports Network) - A pair of former world No. 1s, Russian Maria Sharapova and American Venus Williams, were among Tuesday's winners at the $200,000 Istanbul Cup tennis event.
The top-seeded Sharapova received a bye into the second round, where she got past Bulgarian Tsvetana Pironkova 6-4, 7-6 (7-1) in her first match following a seven-week injury layoff. The tall Russian hadn't played a WTA match since losing to Serena Williams in Miami in late March.
The 20-year-old Sharapova was last year's U.S. Open champion and this year's Australian Open runner-up to Serena.
Sharapova will meet the Romina Oprandi-Agnieszka Radwanska winner in Thursday's quarterfinals.
fourth-seeded Williams highlighted Day 2's first-round winners, as the five- time Grand Slam champ and 2005 Istanbul titlist throttled helpless Belarusian Tatiana Poutchek 6-1, 6-2 at this final clay-court French Open tune-up.
Venus' second-round opponent will be France's Aravane Rezai.
In other first-round action, third-seeded Swiss Patty Schnyder shut down Taipei's Yung-Jan Chan 6-1, 6-1, while upsets came when Colombian Catalina Castano cut down sixth-seeded German Anna-Lena Groenefeld 7-6 (7-3), 6-2 and American Meghann Shaughnessy ousted eighth-seeded Indian Sania Mirza 6-4, 6-3.

Additional opening-round wins came for Russian qualifier Ekaterina Afinogenova, Latvian qualifier Anastasija Sevastova, Belarusian qualifier Ekaterina Dzehalevich and American Vania King.

This week's titlist will pocket $28,180.