World No. 1 Simona Halep crushed seven time Grand Slam-winner Venus Williams in straight sets on Thursday at the WTA Montreal event just hours after a delivering a marathon three-hour victory over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Top seed Halep took no prisoners against Williams, blitzing the American 6-2, 6-2 in just 71 minutes to reach the quarter-finals. Halep's match against Pavlyuchenkova was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but rains forced organisers to postpone it until Thursday morning.