Serena slip-up ends Sister Slam

Paris: The "Sister Slam" has not come off, as Venus and Serena Williams have been left one Coupe Suzanne Lenglen short of holding all four grand slam trophies at the same time.

Venus was last summer's Wimbledon champion, and Serena went on to win last season's US Open and this season's Australian Open.

But Serena's hopes of winning her third consecutive major, and her family's fourth slam in a row, were ended with a quarterfinal 7-6, 5-7, 7-5 defeat to Russia's Svetlana Kuznetsova.

The younger of the Californian sisters still has her non-calendar year "Serena Slam", which she achieved by winning the sport's four biggest prizes one after another, starting with the 2002 French Open and ending with the 2003 Australian Open.

But Venus and Serena managed to get only three-quarters of the way through the non-calendar year "Sister Slam".

Serena had been in dire form coming into the tournament, having lost her opening match at the three warm-up clay-court tournaments that she played, and there had been moments when it appeared as though it was her bloody-mindedness that was taking her through the tournament.

For a stage, it looked as though she was going to do the same against Kuznetsova. In the second set, the Russian lost her footing at the back of the court, and, though she held a 5-3 lead, she did not win the set.

And when Williams went a break up in the decider, it seemed as though the American was well set.

But Williams said: "I pretty much gave it to her. I was like, 'Here, do you want to go to the semis? Because I don't'. She was like, 'OK'."