Sloane Stephens Defeats Old Doubles Partner Timea Babos to Move on at Australian Open

Sloane Stephens is on to the third round at the Australian Open after beating Timea Babos.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Sloane Stephens has advanced to the third round at Melbourne Park with a 6-3, 6-1 win over her former junior doubles partner Timea Babos.

Babos faced 23 break points and managed to save 18 of them, otherwise the match would have been over quicker than its elapsed time of 1 hour, 35 minutes.

The fifth-seeded Stephens, who won the 2017 U.S. Open, captured junior doubles titles with Babos at the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2010.

Stephens will next play Petra Martic.

In other early women's matches, No. 19-seeded Caroline Garcia defeated Zoe Hives 6-3, 6-3, Aliaksandra Sasnovich beat 20th-seeded Anett Kontaveit 6-3, 6-3 and 31st-seeded Martic beat Marketa Vondrousova 6-4, 7-5.