Sharapova leads Russian revolution at Carlsbad

Confident Maria Sharapova lead a third-round Russian rout on Thursday at the San Diego Classic, but denied that her 6-0, 6-3 win over Tatiana Golovin was a cakewalk.

The top-seeded defending champion ran off nine straight games before the 13th-seeded French challenger got on the scoreboard.

"It was not as easy as it looked," said two-time grand slam winner Sharapova. "About half of those first games went to deuce. I gave back two breaks in the second set and was lucky to get the win in straight sets."

Sharapova is dealing with a long-running shoulder problem which - while occasionally painful - cannot get worse and will slowly heal, doctors tell her.

In the quarters to be played on Friday, Maria will play unseeded Sania Mirza of India.  Maria has played Mirza once before at the US Open in 2005 and won in straight sets.