Numbers game is big deal for Venus

Thoughts turned to Venus Williams, the older sister. Venus, supplanted by her younger sister, Serena, as the world number one before plummeting to fourth in the rankings, has an issue with tennis, writes Johnny Watterson from Wimbledon

She doesn't like four; she likes one. Williams women have high standards. Venus having to travel around the world with a number four sitting beside her name on the match programmes is like walking around with a plastic red nose and "loser" on her back.

A stomach-muscle injury that had prevented her from practising properly had taken the wind out of her campaign to blow her sister off the throne and put the Belgians Kim Clijsters and Justin Henin-Hardenne back where the Williamses believe they belong - far from their domain of Grand Slam titles.

Yesterday the 21-year-old Russian Nadia Petrova was expected to road-test Venus, give the draw a clue about just how much of her old game she has retrieved. Petrova - whose father, Viktor, was a top-class javelin thrower and mother, Nadejda, a bronze medallist in the 400-metre relay at the Moscow Olympics of 1980 - showed us two things. The first is that Russians are world-beaters at scowling and the second is that Venus has made a quantum leap back towards looking like a serious threat to the bottom half of the draw.

It took 62 minutes of court time to beat Petrova 6-1, 6-2, just 11 minutes longer than second-seed Clijsters needed to throttle American Samantha Reeves by the same score. Clijsters has now conceded only seven games in three matches and if she finds safe passage through the minefield of next week, she will meet Williams in the semi-final.

Aware of the ability of her opponent and the fact Petrova was a semi-finalist at Roland Garros while Venus departed in the first round, still the American remained unimpressed by the sweep of her win. But that's her style.

A flat hitter with good movement but a game more suited to the clay, Petrova must now feel puzzled. Last time she met Williams, two years ago, she lost 6-2, 6-0. That's one game of an advance in two years.

The run of play was no different from what we've become used to from the first week's elite. Petrova was pushed around the court and unable to find any rhythm. Whenever she did resist, Williams moved up a gear and by the end of the hour, the young Russian was fighting for reputation alone.

"I think I just had a really good day out there," said Williams. "I had all the right shots. I guess there will be other times that she'll definitely do better against me."

Delivered with typically gentle understatement, but Williams, probably inadvertently, proceeded to strike terror into the rest of the field when asked whether her game was as good as before the injury.

"I think better," she replied. "I really definitely focused on my game, worked really hard. I guess I'm just doing a lot better, to sum it up."

Williams now faces another, younger Russian, 18-year-old Vera Zvonareva, in the fourth round, the player who beat her in Paris. No big deal in the Williams mind. You see, the real Venus never even travelled to France.

"I think it's a lot different. Definitely the circumstances are a lot different. It's nice for her to have the win at the French Open. Obviously it wasn't nice for me. Even if I had won that match I couldn't see how I'd have been able to do very much at the French to be honest. I really wasn't prepared. It was just a real fight against myself. I didn't even consider what she had done. I made like 70 unforced errors. That was definitely the death of me. I don't think I'll do that next round."

The 1999 champion, Lindsay Davenport, like Venus troubled by injury, showed little sign of it against Zimbabwe's Cara Black. Davenport won all her points but one at the net in a 48-minute filleting. Black conceded the first set 6-2 in 21 minutes, the second by the same score in 27.