Tennis: Venus Falls to Earth

If you come from a town called Wayne (in Pennsylvania), as Lisa Raymond does, you should be expected to get off your horse and show a bit of true grit. Which is exactly what the 30-year-old did to topple Venus Williams, the third seed.

Remaining steady when Williams counterattacked aggressively in the second set of the third-round match, Raymond held on for a victory that frankly - and no disrespect intended - was good news for the women's game.

It would have been a fine effort if Williams had managed to come back to win the first tournament she has entered since losing to sister Serena in last year's Wimbledon final. It would also have been a pretty poor reflection on the strength of women's tennis. Grand-slam tournaments shouldn't be won by players who are feeling their way back after long-term injuries.

William, 23, played at Wimbledon despite pulled stomach muscles and it took her the rest of the year to recover. Her lengthy convalescence was all too evident as she failed to match the 30-year-old Raymond's greater consistency and lost 6-4 7-6 (7-5). Having saved the first of two match points with a do-or-die backhand, Williams swiped a forehand wide on the second.

'I'm pretty much in shock. I still can't believe it,' said Williams, who was her family's one hope to win here with Serena still recovering from knee surgery. 'It's definitely going to settle in this evening. It will be like, "Noooooo!" That's the way I feel after every loss.'

Commendably, Williams, four times a grand-slam winner and runner-up to Serena in Melbourne last year, did not offer her long lay-off as an excuse. 'Lisa kept it coming. She had a lot of shots rockin' and rollin' today,' she said after a patchy performance in which she struck 14 aces but made only 56 per cent of her first serves. 'I definitely had a lot of high hopes to do well here and, of course, ultimately, to win. That's the way it is. You win some, you lose some.'

Raymond, better known as a doubles player having won three grand-slam titles, showed she could also play singles, using heavy slice to keep Williams under pressure. 'I stepped up to the plate and just believed I could win. That was the bottom line today,' she said after reaching the last 16 of the Australian Open for the first time in 11 attempts. 'As the underdog, you definitely feel like you can swing a little freer. I was getting the ball deep and I was really ripping my forehand.'

Raymond has an intriguing match tomorrow against Tatiana Golovin of France, who is the surprise player of the tournament. Golovin, who is 16 today, received a wild-card entry into the singles as part of a reciprocal agreement between the French and Australian federations. Yesterday she beat Lina Krasnoroutskaya of Russia 6-2 7-6 (7-4), her second victory over a seeded player after she beat Israel's Anna Smashnova-Pistolesi.

Golovin, who was eight months old when her parents moved from Moscow to France, is having to pull out of the junior singles because of her unexpected progress in the main event. 'I don't know her really very much, but she's very good in doubles, which means she's going to come to the net a bit,' Golovin said of her match against Raymond. 'So I'm going to need good passing.'

Still, though, the players to beat are the two Belgians, Justine Henin-Hardenne and Kim Clijsters, who both reached the last 16 without dropping a set. Clijsters, who feared an ankle injury would keep her out of the tournament, eased through yesterday with a 6-2 6-1 win over Russian teenager Dinara Safina.