MONTREAL -- Maria Sharapova continued her bid to climb back to the top of women's tennis with a 6-0, 6-2 victory over 12th-seeded Daria Kasatkina in the second round of the women's Rogers Cup on Wednesday.

Sharapova, the former world No. 1 who was ranked 149th a year ago after serving a 15-month doping ban, posted a second one-sided win in a row after a 6-1, 6-2 defeat of qualifier Sesil Karatantcheva in the opening round.

The Russian will face fifth-seeded Caroline Garcia of France in the third round. Sharapova is 4-1 in previous meetings, but Garcia won their last one this year in Stuttgart.

Unseeded Kiki Bertens is ranked 18th in the world so it wasn't much of an upset when she beat ninth-seeded Karolina Pliskova 6-2, 6-2 to advance to a third-round encounter with eighth-seeded Petra Kvitova.

Alize Cornet of France defeated off-form Wimbledon champion Angelique Kerber 6-4, 6-1 to advance to a third round meeting with 15th-seeded Ashleigh Barty of Australia, who downed Belgian Alison Van Uytvanck 7-6 (7) 6-2.

Kerber leads her all-time series with Cornet 3-2, but the Frenchwoman has won both of their meetings on hard courts. Cornet's last win over a player ranked in the top-5 in the world was also a hard court win over Kerber in Beijing in 2017.

Kerber led the WTA Tour in hard court wins this year with 21, but she wilted in the sticky heat at IGA Stadium in her first match since her Wimbledon triumph.

"It is one match, I know I have to learn from it," said fourth-seeded Kerber. "I took a few weeks off after Wimbledon so I knew I had to come here, play a lot of matches, and also to get used to the hard courts again.

"Of course, it was not the plan to play just one match but, at the end, this is tennis. Every tournament starts from zero. Now I'll try to get ready for the next tournament."

The top eight seeds got a bye to the second round.

Qualifier Carla Suarez Navarro of Spain, a former top-10 player, got past Lesia Tsurenko 6-4, 3-2 when her Ukrainian opponent retired in the second set.

Francoise Abanda of Montreal, the last Canadian left in the singles draw, is to face American Sloane Stevens later Wednesday on what is forecast to be a rainy day.