Safina shows no mercy to debutante Ahn

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dinara Safina doused the youthful exuberance of grand slam debutante Kristie Ahn with a 6-3 6-4 win to reach the second round of the U.S. Open on Tuesday.

The Russian sixth seed made no allowances for Ahn, who at 16 is the youngest woman in the draw, and showed off her repertoire of groundstrokes and thundering serves to get her campaign off to a flying start.

With a ranking of 758 in the world, American qualifier Ahn would not have been expected to pose much of a threat to the in-form Safina but that did not stop the Russian from shouting and screaming her way to victory.

The Olympic silver medalist will next face Italian qualifier Roberta Vinci.

(Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by Trevor Huggins)