Tennis-Serena warms up in style for Henin clash

PARIS, June 3 (Reuters) Serena Williams reached the 19th grand slam quarter-final of her career today with a comfortable 6-2 6-3 defeat of Russian Dinara Safina.

The sole American player left in either singles draw surged into a 4-0 lead and never looked back as she stormed through for an eagerly-anticipated clash with Belgian top seed Justin Henin.

''That was definitely better today,'' said the 25-year-old, playing here for the first time since 2004. ''It came together in practice the other day and I knew if I could play the way I practised, I would be able to do a good job.

''Usually I don't like to peak too soon. I like to bring up the level of my play right around the quarters, semis, mainly in the finals.

Safina, a quarter-finalist herself last year, looked totally dejected during the first set, muttering at the baseline and scolding herself as she was blown away by a barrage of winners from the rampant Williams.

Only briefly in the second set did the 10th seed, one of four Russians who reached the last 16, threaten to make a make a real contest of it when she broke the Williams serve for the only time in the match.

She had another chance at 2-2 but Williams won a long rally to snuff out the danger before speeding away to victory in one hour 17 minutes.

''I'm very excited about the match-up,'' Williams said of her clash with Henin, who she lost to in an ill-tempered semi-final in 2003. ''It was what it was, we're both different people now.'' REUTERS BJR VC1925