American fifth seed Sloane Stephens has ended the Australian Open campaign of her former former junior doubles partner Timea Babos.

Stephens triumphed 6-3 6-1 although the second-round victory was a more hard-fought one than suggested by the scoreline.

Hungarian Babos was down break point on 23 occasions, but Stephens was only able to convert five of them in a match which lasted one hour and 35 minutes.

“We won three junior grand slam doubles together, so I know she’s a very good player and I had to be patient,” said Stephens, the 2017 US Open champion.

“Her serve is ridiculously good.”

A former semi-finalist in Melbourne, Stephens’ third-round opponent will be Croatian No.31 seed Petra Martic, who ousted Czech Marketa Vondrousova 6-4 7-5.

In other early action on Wednesday, French No.19 seed Caroline Garcia eased past Australian wildcard Zoe Hives 6-3 6-3.

Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova upset No.9 seed Kiki Bertens from the Netherlands 3-6 6-3 6-3.

Belarusian Aliaksandra Sasnovich also ousted a seed, beating No.20 Anett Kontaveit from Estonia 6-3 6-3.