Venus Williams exits French Open.(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Byline: Charles Bricker

PARIS _ No fist pumps. No kisses to the crowd. No pirouetting on the red clay as the audience on the stadium court rose to cheer this momentous upset of Venus Williams as if it was V-E Day.

Vera Zvonareva simply looked across the court at her soft-spoken coach, Julia Kashevarova, clenched her hand lightly at chest level and walked, unsmiling, to the net to shake hands.

"Why should she dance around?" Kashevarova asked later, grinning. "It's one match. She didn't win the French Open, did she?"

This 2-6, 6-2, 6-4 stunner in the round of 16 was a masterpiece of pugnacious, fearless tennis in which Zvonareva not only played spectacular defense against Williams' best stuff but stuck to her game plan of going after Williams' forehand and executed it beautifully.

In the final three games, all won by Zvonareva, Williams, the No. 3 seed, committed seven unforced forehand groundstroke errors and some might have given her an eighth for a ball she drove into the net on the first point at 5-4.

The Russians administered not one but two upsets to the United States women on this sweltering Sunday. One hour and 14 minutes after Zvonareva erased Venus from the tournament, raising any number of questions about Williams' future, unseeded compatriot Nadia Petrova knocked out No. 7 Jennifer Capriati 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.