NEW YORK -- After waiting out a five-hour rain delay, third-seeded Jennifer Capriati and former champions Venus Williams, Lindsay Davenport and Martina Hingis advanced to the third round of the U.S. Open on Thursday.

Another former champ, two-time winner Monica Seles, had to rally from a set down to get into the third round.

Williams, the two-time defending Open champion, improved her 2002 match record to 56-6 -- she's 0-3 against sister Serena -- with a 6-1, 6-2 defeat of Alicia Molik; 1998 winner Davenport wrapped up her 6-4, 6-2 victory over Petra Mandula in a match halted by rain Wednesday night at 2-2 in the second set; and 1997 champion Hingis eliminated Antonella Serra Zanetti 6-4, 6-1.

Williams' match was delayed five hours by the rain, but when the No. 2 seed did get on court she looked in top form and sealed a 54-minute win with a powerful serve.

"I was a little bit distracted because of the atmosphere," Williams said. "But otherwise that was OK. I like to, right off the bat, show her what I can do."

Seles, the U.S. Open champion in 1991 and '92 worked her way out of a big deficit to construct a 1-6, 7-6 (5), 6-2 win over Barbara Schwartz, who was two points from victory at 5-5 in the tiebreaker.

"It was a great feeling at this stage of my career,'' Seles said of fan-fueled rally. "The crowd pulled me through tonight. I could have lost without their help. I came out flat.''

Capriati was broken in the first game of the match but shook off that shaky start to move past Tina Pisnik 6-4, 6-2. She finished both sets with pretty drop shots and won nine straight games to secure the match, which lasted 1 hour, 5 minutes.

Capriati hopes to add an Open trophy to the three Grand Slam titles she's won in Australia and France in the past two years. But she'll need to serve better than she did in ousting Pisnik.

Capriati had nine double faults -- "It's obvious they're an annoyance,'' she said -- was broken three times, and won the point just 33 percent of the time on her second serves.

Davenport won the first set Wednesday night and the second was tied 2-2 before being suspended by rain. The 1999 champion won four straight games to complete the victory.

"I haven't won a tournament in a long time,'' said Davenport, playing in her first Grand Slam after knee surgery. "I'm really eager. Physically, I'm 100 percent."

Hingis, playing in only her second event since returning to the tour following ankle surgery, was slow to warm up during the cool, breezy evening session and quickly found herself down an early break and trailing the 120th-ranked Zanetti 3-1 in the opening set.

But with golfing boyfriend Sergio Garcia watching from the stands, the Swiss former world No. 1 twice broke serve to claim the first set.

Capriati's victory and Davenport's completion were the first matches on a crowded program that was compressed by the rain. All doubles were postponed but organizers hoped to get in as many matches as possible because of weather forecasts that predicted more rain for the weekend.

Information from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report.