Reporting from Paris — In a bizarre setting just before 9 p.m. Wednesday on Court Suzanne Lenglen, Venus Williams lost a first-set tiebreaker to Lucie Safarova of the Czech Republic just before the chair umpire called it a night.
Much of Roland Garros seemed to have called it a night already, as the Williams-Safarova second-round tussle at the French Open began in a veritable cavern, the crowd so sparse it became almost possible to count it.
As the world's No. 46 player, Safarova, and the No. 3 player, Williams, traded sharp groundstrokes in the tennis complex's second-largest stadium court, the serial roars from the main Court Philippe Chatrier proved audible. Over there, the veteran Russian Marat Safin and the young Frenchman Josselin Ouanna treated the rowdy leftovers to a five-set plot, with Ouanna prevailing 10-8 in the fifth.
For Williams, whose loss in the third round last year to Flavia Pennetta of Italy ended in near-darkness, it was a second straight year of oddity in the gloaming.
Since reaching her lone French final in 12 tries in 2002, Williams hasn't surpassed the quarterfinals here. She exited in the third round in three of the last four years. Still, her recent form and the wide-open, mishmash nature of the women's game seemed to give her a reasonable chance this time.
She defeated Safarova three weeks ago on clay in Rome, 6-2 in the third set, and she rebounded from an early 3-1 deficit to 4-4 Wednesday night. From there, they stayed on serve until a tiebreaker of high quality, which found Safarova pounding impressive winners to corners for her last two points, as Williams' shrieks from chasing down balls echoed.
When Safarova, a 22-year-old left-hander, wrong-footed Williams with a closing forehand into the corner, it gave her a 7-5 tiebreak win and meant Venus and sister Serena Williams have lost sets in each of their three matches thus far here. Serena Williams resumes against 133rd-ranked Virginia Ruano Pascal of Spain on Thursday, and Venus Williams finishes with Safarova and needing to repeat her comment of Monday.
"I'm definitely a third-set player," she said then after defeating Bethanie Mattek-Sands 6-1, 4-6, 6-2. Her second-round match will resume with Williams hoping to revisit that knack.
