Serena gets slammed grandly

Awaited since a Roland Garros printer spit out the draw, the French Open quarterfinal between Serena Williams and Justine Henin proved that people sometimes await the wrong things.

This particular thing fizzled Tuesday, then deflated, then ended, 6-4, 6-3, in 78 spark-less minutes during which Williams played as if one of the world’s many meeker humans had occupied her body.

The Australian Open champion whose father saw her Paris posture and deemed her “ready to grab a ... wild bear,” wound up treating the patrons at Court Philippe Chatrier to a motley collection of netted shots, never asking Henin to plumb the French mastery that makes her 19-0 here since 2004.

Match point qualified as telltale, as Williams served, Henin returned low, and Williams dug it out with a forehand that went whirring into the net’s unforgiving middle region.

As the ball dropped from there to the clay, it seemed to go thud.

The quarterfinal between two of the three most accomplished tennis players in the draw had wound up looking so very second round, and Henin had eased into a semifinal opposite Jelena Jankovic and alongside fellow semifinalists Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic.

All that remained Tuesday was a cordial handshake and a wish-you-well from the loser to the winner -- an improvement over their inharmonious 2003 semifinal -- and then for a wry Williams to pan herself.

She excelled at that.

She scored with this: “I just pretty much stood back and let her take advantage of me, and I feel violated.”

And this: “I’ve never played so hideous and horrendous and all those other words.”

And this: “I don’t think I’ve ever played so bad in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam.”

And this: “Sometimes you’ve got to just step back and say, ‘OK, try this, try that, or try Plan B.’ But I think my Plan B was to make errors. Obviously, that never works.”

And this: “All she had to do was show up.”

She did rate Henin as having “played pretty well” and having “hit decent.”

Hitting decent or well didn’t concern Henin as much as testing the durability of her composure. The last Williams-Henin meeting saw Henin fumble two match points in a 0-6, 7-5, 6-3 loss in Miami in March. For a player with clever gifts on her favorite surface, Henin’s mission centered on calmness.

Her calm survived her five untimely double faults, and she even split the two games in which she double-faulted twice. She noticed that Williams “didn’t look very aggressive” and summarized plainly, “I was very calm and I did a very good job.”

Calm worked swimmingly during the fifth game of the second set, when it grew clear that Williams’ penchant for danger -- witness Miami, when Williams won despite frequent errors -- might not hold up this time around.

Serving at 40-15, Williams floated a backhand long to end a seven-shot rally for 40-30. Unforced error. Then a beautiful 13-shot rally ended with Henin running down a would-be winner and Williams sending a forehand into the net. Unforced error. Then Henin erred to give Williams advantage, but Williams simply would not have it.

On the fifth shot of a rally, she sent a backhand long from the baseline for an unforced error. On the third shot of a non-rally, she dug out a forehand and lifted that long for an unforced error. On the third shot of another non-rally, she yanked a backhand into the net for an unforced error.

Her flicker of a flirtation with the Grand Slam, born of the Australian championship, her French advancement and the weakening of the women’s field given injuries and hiatuses and retirements, went doused in a match entirely different from the 2003 hubbub.

On that day, the crowd cheered Henin and jeered Williams, to the point of applauding her service faults as Henin rose to win from a 4-2 third-set deficit. On this day, Williams emerged Tuesday to polite, golf-esque cheers for the second women’s quarterfinal, then Henin appeared 10 seconds later to bigger cheers with four Belgium flags dancing in the upper deck, what with Belgium just up the road.

“I think they were definitely for Justine, but that doesn’t matter,” Williams said, even as she didn’t give them much chance to prove it. They did jeer her after she chucked her racket to the clay after losing the first game of the second set, after a Henin forehand return screamed past Williams’ feet and her awkward answer resembled a bunt.

She answered the jeers, though, by winning eight of the next 10 points for a 2-1 lead before her errors mounted.

From a ranking of No. 140 last July after knee injuries, she had vaulted to No. 81 before the Australian Open and all the way to No. 8 before the French Open, to a perch from which she actually could daydream of a Grand Slam.

When that fizzled, her mind-boggling 11-month progress would end with ... a trip to Florida.

“Well, since I lost, unfortunately, so I have to go back home to the very, very hot conditions in Florida,” Williams said. “So this is a punishment for me to train. If I had won, then I would have been able to not endure the 200-degree weather.”

She added, “It’s going to be horrible.”