Venus Williams avenged one of the most embarrassing defeats of her career as the defending champion swept into the last 16 at Wimbledon with a 6-0, 6-4 victory over Carla Suarez Navarro on Saturday.

Williams, 29, was unceremoniously bundled out of the Australian Open by unseeded Spaniard Suarez Navarro in the second round in January.

The shock loss was especially galling for Venus as she had led 5-2 in the third set and held a match point before Suarez Navarro claimed her first win over a top 10 player.

But Venus, the third seed, made amends on Saturday in clinical fashion to keep alive her bid to become the first woman to win a hat-trick of Wimbledon singles' titles since Steffi Graf claimed three in a row from 1991 to 1993.

Williams, who faces former world number one Ana Ivanovic in the fourth round, said: "I was really enjoying myself out there. She's a fast and competitive player so I was happy to close it out.

"When you're winning at Wimbledon there's not much better than that."

Venus once again played with her left knee swathed in bandages but was hardly restricted as she eased past Suarez Navarro in one hour and 21 minutes.

The five-time Wimbledon champion has yet to drop a set in three rounds this year and her winning streak at the All England Club has now reached 17 matches.

Suarez Navarro, the world number 34, has already reached two Grand Slam quarter-finals at the tender age of 20, but she never threatened to repeat her Australian Open heroics.

A break for Venus in the opening game set the tone. With memories of that Melbourne defeat driving her on, Williams was quickly 4-0 up and took the set without surrending a game.

When Venus got an early break in the second set, the contest looked over, but Suarez Navarro won her first game at the ninth attempt and then Venus dropped serve to make it 2-2.

For the first time, Suarez Navarro had managed to test Williams, but it couldn't last. The former world number one upped her game, broke for a 5-4 lead and served out the match.

Venus will have noted that Serbian glamour girl Ivanovic showed signs of recapturing her former glories during an impressive 7-5, 6-2 victory over Australian 18th seed Samantha Stosur.

A year ago Ivanovic arrived in south-west London on top of the world rankings following her French Open victory. But a miserable run of results since that Paris triumph have left her outside the top 10 for the first time in two years.

The 13th seed, a Wimbledon semi-finalist in 2007, clearly has the game for grass however and was too strong for Stosur, who reached the French Open semifinals earlier this month.

Former Wimbledon junior champion Caroline Wozniacki, the ninth seed, reached the fourth round for the first time as the Danish teenager defeated Spain's Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-2, 6-2.