Third seed Venus Williams opened her title bid at the 2009 China Open, being played here in Beijing with a straight sets win over Russian Vera Dushevina to reach the second round of the event.

Williams completely dominated the Russian in the opening set and pocketed it 6-2 in little over a half hour. The second set saw Dushevina serve for the set at 6-5, but Williams broke her right back to take the match into a deciding tie-break. With a comfirtable 5-0 lead, the American then sealed the match in little over one hour of play.

In another exciting match of the day, tenth seed Flavia Pennetta beat Chinese Wild Card Xinyun Han 7-6(2), 6-2 in 79 minutes of play to reach the the second round.

An In-form Canadian Aleksandra Wozniak also joined the fellow winners with a hard-fought 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 win over Frenchwoman Aravane Rezai.

In a notable upset, unseeded Frenchwoman Alize Cornet beat No. 15 seeded Australian Samantha Stosur 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 to move ahead in the draw in a match that lasted two hours and eight minutes.

Venus Williams' conqueror in Tokyo, Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova looked impressive in her 7-5, 6-1 routing of Austrian Sybille Bammer in the day's only other main draw match.