Erratic Venus Still Searching for Solution to Clay

Eleven o'clock on a grey morning in northern Europe is no time or place for a California girl to play tennis - and at times, especially early on, Venus Williams looked as though she would have preferred to be anywhere but Court Philippe-Chatrier at Roland Garros.

But as milky sunshine broke through, the No8 seed, who is making her 12th attempt to win the clay-court game's crown of crowns, warmed to what was not the most exacting of tasks, subduing Selima Sfar, a qualifier from that tennis mini-power, Tunisia. Her 6-2, 6-4 victory in 92 minutes confirmed her place in the third round.

If everything works out as the seedings predict, Williams will make it to the quarter-finals where she will meet Jelena Jankovic, the third-seeded Serb who came through an injury scare to beat Marina Erakovic today. The semi-finals are where the Williams sisters will meet if they manage to upset the seedings - Serena is No5 - and where Venus will have the chance to avenge her defeat in the 2002 Paris final. But that's looking ahead a little too far, particularly in view of Venus' erratic form against Sfar.

To an extent, Venus deserves great credit for achieving anything at all on clay, so contrary are its demands to the sort of game she plays. She is far too restless, wanting to get things done quickly when patience is a quality that the surface requires above most others. Where a clay-courter will spend his or her day moving from side to side, endlessly retrieving, Williams cannot resist going back and forth - mostly forth - in search of a winning volley. If only the damned surface would sprout a little grass, she must be thinking.

Sfar, 30, who left Tunisia when she was 13 to train with Nathalie Tauziat in Biarritz, France, is a clay-courter with a game that is sound rather than spectacular. This was her third French Open, but her first since 2002. In each of the next five years she failed to make it through qualifying.

The punchiest part of Sfar's game is her serve, which regularly exceeds 170kph. After that she relies mostly on court craft and pleasant, rather than devastating, ground strokes. Her single-handed backhand is a bit like Justine Henin's, but no more than a bit. She can be unexpectedly creative, as she was when she tried a drop-shot return off a spanking Williams serve.

Sfar's one passage of real ascendancy came in the third game when she broke Williams to love, although in truth this had more to do with the American's ground strokes misfiring than Sfar being the better player. At 30-all in the next game, Sfar was two points from a 3-1 lead but Williams' pugnacious response to this slightly awkward situation restored the expected order. Typical, though, of Williams' patchy form was her start to the seventh game, a pumped-up ace followed by the limpest of double faults.

Williams lapsed in the middle of the second set when she dropped serve to trail 3-2; and having opened a 40-love lead in the next game she was pegged back to deuce and then needed a lucky reflex volley to save a point that would have put her 4-2 behind.

That was the end of the excitement and the match ended in a manner that was not wholly representative of what had gone before when Williams clumped the cleanest of forehand winners down the line.