Davenport forced to back out

Fear walked tall on Court Central yesterday. It was in the eyes of Lindsay Davenport. It was in her stride and in her manner and shadowed her every move.

Dominique Van Roost saw it. The crowd saw it. Each cautious relay to the advertising hoarding to fetch a ball, every unwanted, low back-hand stretch over the tramlines indicated the world number two's fear.

In the end it beat her, and the Belgian claimed the biggest win of her career. It took three sets 6-7, 64, 6-3, but Davenport's back has not been good since the Italian Open and every movement yesterday said so.

In the last game of the second set, against an opponent who would normally have given her little trouble, Davenport served and her muscles went into spasm. Her competitive instinct urged her to continue, but the scoreline tells the real story.

The American's defeat now leaves the competition wide open in the lower half of the draw, where she might have met Venus Williams in the semi-final had the seedings advanced according to plan.

"With Lindsay out, the draw opens up for everybody, not just me," said Williams after her win over unseeded Jana Kandarr.

For Van Roost it was a victory she had scarcely believed possible. She burst into tears afterwards, as the win represented the end of a bleak period in her life. In March, following the death of her mother, she left the game for two months.

"It has been pretty difficult for me the last few weeks because I was away from the game," she said. "When I started again I wasn't playing very well. Mentally I was very weak. Then when I got here and saw the draw I said, `Well God really isn't nice to me at this time'."

Moving in mysterious ways, Davenport now looks on her exit as good karma for Wimbledon rather than bad news for Roland Garros.

"Well, one thing about losing so early is that I have a lot of weeks," she said. "Normally there's only two weeks before Wimbledon, now I've three-and-a-half. Unfortunately it (French Open) was just a week too soon."

Williams, also coming back from injury, having had tendonitis in both wrists, looked battle-ready but lacked just a little consistency in her thumping ground strokes. Despite that minor flaw, she was on court against Germany's Kandarr for less than an hour, winning the first set 6-0 in less than 23 minutes.

Afterwards the 19-year-old American, who has yet to win a Grand Slam event, refused to be drawn into the controversy surrounding the new book by Nathalie Tauziat, which accuses the Williams sisters of being aloof from the rest of the players on the tour.

"She's entitled to her opinion," responded Williams, whose younger sister, Serena, last year's US Open winner, is not here.

The 6ft 1in Venus also defended her preference for playing ground strokes almost exclusively, pointing to her speed around the court.

"I'm a big girl but I get around with the best of them. I'll get there in one or two steps, they'll take six small ones," she said.

Also into round two is Anna Kournikova, another player coming back from injury and also trying to keep daggers out of her back. Another target of Tauziat's in her book for gaining more attention in the sport than trophies, Kournikova's attitude was cheerily dismissive. Many believe the 18year-old needs a break from the same relentless questions.

"Your image and attention off court is undeniable," she was told.

"Comes with the job," she said.

"It's particularly focused on you?"

"I can't change it." "Would you want to?"

"I can't change it," she repeated.

"If you could would you?"

"I can't. Why waste your nerves thinking about it"

And so it went. Kournikova's 64, 6-4 win over Canadian Vanessa Webb takes her through to round two with, amongst others, ninth seed Amanda Coetzer, fifth seed Conchita Martinez and eighth seed Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario.