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Jelena Jankovic was given the run around by Sweden's Sofia Arvidsson before she booked her place in the third round with a nerve-jangling 6-3 6-7 7-5 win at the US Open.

The second-seeded Serbian twice served for the match in the second set and had also opened a 3-0 lead in the tiebreak but each time Arvidsson pegged her back with a series of stinging groundstrokes.

The world number 63 fell 3-0 behind in the decider before threatening to launch another comeback after Jankovic gifted her the break in the seventh game with a double fault.

But Jankovic kept her wits about her to seal victory when Arvidsson shoved a backhand long on match point. She will next face either Wimbledon semi-finalist Zheng Jie or Spain's Anabel Medina Garrigues.

Former champion Svetlana Kuznetsova recovered from a slow start to beat Romanian teenager Sorana Cirstea 7-6 6-1 to reach the third round.

World number 53 Cirstea, in her first US Open, had the 2004 champion worried when she broke in the sixth game to take a 4-2 lead.

But the Russian third seed broke straight back, won the tiebreak 7-3 and then ripped through the second set to seal a third-round clash with Slovenian 28th seed Katarina Srebotnik.

Olympic champion Elena Dementieva stepped up a gear to reach the third round with a 6-2 6-1 demolition of Pauline Parmentier of France.

Having been pushed hard by Uzbekistan's Akgul Amanmuradova in her opening match, the Russian fifth seed was never in trouble and cruised past the world number 49 in 58 minutes.

Parmentier, 22, who has never been beyond round two at a grand slam, broke Dementieva twice but did not hold her own serve in the opening set.

An early break put Dementieva ahead in the second set and she cruised through to a meeting with unseeded Briton Anne Keothavong.

In Wednesday's late match, Lindsay Davenport needed to rely on her greater wealth of experience to steer past Russian teenager Alisa Kleybanova 7-5 6-3 in the second round.

Davenport, champion in 1998, struggled to find her range in the opening match of the night session but capitalised on 27 unforced errors from Kleybanova to seal victory.

Former world number one Davenport will next face Frenchwoman Marion Bartoli.

The American 23rd seed served for the opening set at 5-4 up but some dogged play from her 19-year-old opponent meant she had to toil on for another two games before bagging it.

Kleybanova, competing at the Open for the first time, tried to stay in the hunt in the second set but was eventually outclassed and bowed out by tipping a backhand wide.

The victory gave Davenport her best Grand Slam showing of the year after losing in the second round at the Australian Open, skipping the French and withdrawing with a knee injury from round two at Wimbledon.

Davenport, who waved to her baby son, Jagger, up in the stands after her victory, said she felt her game beginning to come together after returning from Beijing where she played doubles in the Olympics.

"It was only when I got back from China maybe last Saturday that I was able to start practising for singles," she said. "So to expect I would be out here and be perfect is probably shooting for the stars a little bit too much."

Reuters