PARIS -- Venus Williams did plenty to beat herself, and 15-year-old Sesil Karatantcheva took care of the rest.
The young Bulgarian upset an erratic Williams 6-3, 1-6, 6-1 Friday in the third round of the French Open.
"I had never heard of her before this match," Williams said.
"She played well, definitely. But I also felt like if I just
played 10 percent better, I'm going to win this match easily."
Williams hit just nine winners and committed 52 unforced errors, including seven double faults. She lost serve nine times, including all four service games in the final set.
Top-ranked Lindsay Davenport, the only American remaining, survived her toughest test yet at the French Open and beat Virginie Razzano 7-5, 4-6, 6-4.
"It has been a struggle here," Davenport said. "I'm pretty amazed I'm still here, given how I feel I've been playing. It gives me a laugh."
Davenport's fourth-round opponent will be two-time French Open runner-up Kim Clijsters, who eliminated No. 20-seeded Daniela Hantuchova 6-4, 6-2.
No. 4 Elena Dementieva, the runner-up last year, beat Akiko Morigami 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Dementieva next plays Russian compatriot Elena Likhovtseva, seeded 16th, who beat Silvia Farina Elia 7-5, 7-6 (2). No. 21 Mary Pierce, the 2000 women's champion, beat No. 9 Vera Zvonareva 7-6 (2), 7-5.
Clijsters has beaten Davenport in their past six meetings.
"Not the record you want going into a match with someone," Davenport said. "I have a tough time playing her on my favorite surface, let alone my least favorite, clay."
They'll meet on clay for the first time. A victory would put Davenport in the quarterfinals for the first time since 1999 at Roland Garros, the lone Grand Slam title she has yet to win.
Davenport advanced by overcoming another slow start, 10 double faults and the unseasonable weather to win in 2½ hours.
Against Hantuchova, Clijsters faced her stiffest test so far and
still won in straight sets. Clijsters has swept six sets in three
matches, losing just 10 games while spending barely three hours on
court.
Hantuchova played Clijsters on even terms for much of the first set until the Belgian served it out, smacking a forehand winner on
the third set point. She raced to a 5-1 lead in the second set and
closed out the win in 1 hour, 22 minutes.
"I've practiced with her a billion times," Hantuchova said,
"and she proved all the time to me that she's one of the best
players in the world, if not the best at the moment."
Ranked No. 1 in 2003, Clijsters is seeded just 14th after
missing much of last year with a wrist injury. Now recovering from
a knee injury three weeks ago, she moved well despite a wrap on her
right leg.
"It's holding up during my matches," she said. "But it's
still not good enough to play without the tape. It's getting better
-- you know, maybe 85 or 90 percent."
Clijsters had 29 unforced errors but also hit 23 winners. Hantuchova had 37 errors.
Davenport won despite committing 57 unforced errors and losing her serve six times. The sloppy, seesaw match was so even that midway through the third set, each player had won 100 points.
For the third match in a row, Davenport started badly, committing 16 errors as she lost the first four games. It took her 26 minutes to win a game, but she rallied for 4-all.
Razzano committed four unforced errors to lose serve, giving Davenport her first lead at 6-5, and she then served out the set.
Razzano again raced to a lead in the second set, this time 4-1. Davenport rallied to 4-all but double-faulted to lose the set.
"I'm starting to think one of my greatest achievements in a while is to be able to still be here and still be playing," Davenport said. "I think I've done a good job, even though I'm not playing well, of hanging in these matches."
The loss was the latest Grand Slam disappointment for the 11th-seeded Williams, who was seeking her fifth major title but her first since 2001. She hoped for a strong showing at Roland Garros after winning a final for the first time in a year last week at Istanbul.
Williams showed up for the customary postmatch news conference shortly after her defeat, explaining that she was eager to return to Florida.
"I want to leave," she said. "I have nothing more to do here.
I just want to go."
Karatantcheva, ranked 98th, won the Roland Garros juniors title last year and earned her first victory in a Grand Slam match earlier this week. She trains in Florida, and both her parents are former Bulgarian national champions -- dad in rowing, mom in volleyball.
But few expected her to give Williams trouble.
"She really didn't play her best tennis," Karatantcheva said. "I definitely don't think it was the Venus Williams I watch on TV and I see when I started out. But for me, I did give what I could give. I like that I won, no matter what."
Young Karatantcheva was steady from the baseline and displayed a game reminiscent of Dementieva, only with a better serve.
Karatantcheva remained impassive throughout the match, but when Williams hit one last errant shot on match point -- a backhand into the net -- the youngster squealed and sank to her knees. A gracious
Williams, once a teen prodigy herself, met Karatantcheva at the net
with a smile and a handshake.
Karatantcheva then leaped and threw a fist, blew kisses and
bowed to the crowd on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
"It's obviously great for her," Williams said. "But at the
same time I felt like, wow, I kind of beat myself."
Williams had just two winners and 23 errors in the opening set.
Her mother and coach, Oracene, sat in the stands shaking her head
as the mistakes mounted.
In the second set, Williams steadied her strokes to even the
match. But Karatantcheva won the first seven points of the final
set, ripped a forehand crosscourt winner to go ahead 2-1 and pulled
away from there.
When Karatantcheva checked her cell phone after the match, she
said, she had 20 missed calls.
"I was kind of nervous with all those people watching me," she
said. "But at the end it came out good."