Today the women completed their third-round matches at Indian Wells. Belgians collided, Venus Williams bent but did not break, and Rachel McQuillan continued her improbable run to the fourth round.

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Kim Clijsters (14) def. Justine Hénin (17), 1-6 6-4 6-3
3rd round
Stadium 2
Previous head-to-head: Hénin leads 2-0 (at Challenger events in 1998 and 1999)

Our match of the day featured two Belgian super-teens who are teetering on the edge of joining the elite of women's tennis. Representing Flanders was Kim Clijsters, while Justine Hénin was the standard bearer for the Walloons. The 17-year-old Clijsters is almost exactly one year younger than Hénin, and also possesses the superior ranking. However, Hénin has had the better season. She won fourteen straight matches at the beginning of the year, including two tournaments (Gold Coast and Canberra) before Mo nica Seles broke her 14-match winning streak in the fourth round of the Australian Open.

For this first meeting on the main WTA tour between the two young stars, the match, which spanned late afternoon and early evening, started in brisk conditions that turned downright cold by the match's end. The crowd thinned out quite a bit because of the diving temperature, and only about 100 hardy souls shivered through to the final point. One of them was Lleyton Hewitt, Clijsters's romantic interest, whose face was almost hidden under the hood of a sweatshirt as he took in the action.

Hénin got off to a fast 6-1 start with strong play in the first set. Cuffing shots from corner to corner seemingly at will with both her forehand and one-handed backhand, Justine exhibited an impressive serve as well. The fans around me were marvelling at the power and precision that the waifish 5'6" Hénin could generate. Heck, so was I! A tentative and seemingly edgy Clijsters was just a passenger, and could do little else but to wait for Hénin to cool off

Fortunately for Kim, Justine never recaptured the magic that she had in the opening set. More of Hénin's drives were starting to miss the target in the second set ? or else they were landing too short and allowing Clijsters to step in and give them a good wallop. Clijsters started to do just that, and any time in the last two sets that there was a ball even remotely short or without life, chances were good that it would be mashed by a lethal Clijsters forehand.

The second set was therefore closer, and Clijsters took the decisive advantage when she broke Hénin's serve in a long game at 4-4, thanks to a series of backhand errors by Justine. At 5-4, Clijsters, now more accurate and probing from the baseline, converted on her first set point thanks to a Hénin forehand that found the net.

The third set was closely contested, and in the early stages the games were long and tense. Hénin was now often in a defensive mode, scrambling to retrieve the impressive blasts by Clijsters. Each had three break points that they were unable to convert, until Clijsters finally broke through at 3-3, 30-40, with a backhand winner down the line. Hénin now seemed resigned to a loss, and Clisters swept through the last two games with ease, making good on her first match point thanks to an errant forehand from Hénin, who had sadly turned as cold as the desert evening. Make the final: 1-6, 6-4, 6-3.

Clijsters now appears well-positioned to reach the semifinals here, where she could pose considerable worry for top-seeded Martina Hingis. The 14th-seeded Clijsters is the highest seed left in her quarter of the draw, with Monica Seles, Conchita Martinez and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario all out of the picture. Her fourth round opponent will be Ai Sugiyama, who had little difficulty sweeping aside the unseeded Italian who shocked Seles on Friday night, Tatiana Garbin. And Clijsters would certainly be favoured over either of her prospective quarterfinal opponents, 23rd-seeded Nathalie Dechy or wild card Elena Bovina. Note that Dechy perpetrated the day's biggest upset by eliminating the slumping Sanchez-Vicario in three sets. Dechy seems to like the California desert: she was also a third-round upset demon here last year, when she knocked off Anna Kournikova.

Venus Williams (3) def. Cara Black (32), 6-4, 3-6, 6-0
3rd round
Stadium
Previous head-to-head: first meeting

If you accept the premise that the upper tier of WTA talent is composed of Hingis, Davenport and the Williams sisters ? and I suppose it's a fairly accurate premise ? the elite had not been seriously troubled until this match. Venus Williams, facing the tenacious Zimbabwean Cara Black on the main stadium court, turned in an untidy first set and a positively messy second, but gathered herself in time to post the win.

Venus's form has been spotty in her rare tournament appearances this year, and this weakness was again revealed today. In the second set she went through a horrible patch, with 25 unforced errors compared to only 10 winners. After two sets, Venus had already totalled 46 unprovoked blunders. It was ugly stuff, and certainly unworthy of the Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion. "I just really got away from my game plan, basically?. I was just confused," explained Williams after the match. "It was a real bad state." We'll never know what the game plan was: "I don't want to share that." Why a game plan to defeat Cara Black would be top secret is anyone's guess, but there you have it.

To Venus's credit, in the third set she appeared to adopt the well-known game plan called "hit the ball hard and into the court for winners". Her third set statistics of 13 winners and only 6 unforced errors speak volumes about the dramatic turnaround in the American's effectiveness.

Venus Williams will surely be looking for a tidier effort against one of the upset queens of the tournament, Rachel McQuillan, in the fourth round tomorrow. Should she make it to the quarterfinals, an intriguing match with 8th-seeded Elena Dementieva could be in the cards. Dementieva was a 6-1, 6-4 winner of Luxembourg's Anne Kremer today, and had a few edgy episodes late in the match when she appeared to snap angrily at a fan in the front row who was making some sort of noise during play.

Rachel McQuillan (LL) def. Meghann Shaughnessy (21), 6-3 6-4
3rd round
Stadium 3
Previous head-to-head: Shaughnessy leads 1-0 (a 1998 Challenger tournament in Albuquerque)

Surprising Rachel McQuillan, a lucky loser out of the qualifying field, continues to mow down higher-ranked players from the host nation. After dominating Amy Frazier yesterday, the resurgent Aussie took out one of the tour's in-form players, Meghann Shaughnessy, the runner-up in Scottsdale last week.

Shaughnessy appeared out of sorts today, perhaps because of some physical discomfort. Her right leg, which was slightly injured in Scottsdale last week, was adorned with a thigh wrap as well as some white cream applied just below the knee. Her movement did not seem hampered, but she was impatient and easily frustrated, and was definitely not having much fun on the court.

McQuillan, focused and rock-solid, was a big reason for that. Since losing the first set to Sonya Jeyaseelan in the opening round, McQuillan has won six consecutive sets. She has been serving well, moving the ball around the court with pinpoint accuracy, and occasionally moving forward to knock off solid volleys.

One suspects that McQuillan's run will end tomorrow against Venus Williams. Come what may, the 29-year-old Aussie's solid performance should regain her a spot in the top 50 in the next issue of the WTA rankings. Impressive, given that her ranking was in the triple digits last month.

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Wandering in the desert

Men's qualifiers wind up

Today saw the completion of men's qualifying play, so the identities of our happy qualifiers are now known. They are:

• Davide Sanguinetti, who fought through a marathon three-setter against Richard Fromberg today;
• Cecil Mamiit, who valorously battled past the highly regarded Julien Boutter and Ivan Ljubicic;
• Paradorn Srichaphan, the talented and flashy Thai who bested U.S. Davis Cup member Justin Gimelstob in an excellent match today;
• Arnaud Di Pasquale, the Frenchman who is in desperate search of wins these days;
• Jeff Tarango, who had little difficulty with either Hyung-Taik Lee or Kevin Kim;
• Andrea Gaudenzi, the beneficiary of an injury to Michel Kratochvil today;
• Nicolas Massu, known throughout Chile as "El Vampiro";
• Juan Ignacio Chela, a young Argentine who is making rapid improvement on fast surfaces, as shown by impressive wins over hard-court specialists Sebastien Lareau and Lars Burgsmuller.

The first round of the men's main draw begins tomorrow with a slew of appetizing matchups, and we'll try to keep up with as much of the action as possible.

Rename that player!

The WTA has let it be known that three of its players would like to be known by new names. Venezuela's Maria Alejandra Vento will heretofore be listed as Maria Vento. You will have to get used to Nadia Petrova, the preferred appelation of the rising Russian star formerly known Nadejda Petrova. And get ready for the show-stopper: Julie Shiflet Brown is now to be known as Julie Shiflet. I suspect that the vast majority of tennis fans who have never heard of this woman have never called her anything!

Quotable quotes

Venus Williams is taking a writing course with sister Serena, and appears to be giving her sister considerable help in completing her assignments. "Yes, I've picked her subject already. Please don't write this, the teacher could read it!" Venus also says she is enjoying cooking for friends in the home she is now sharing with Serena. "I cook good desserts. I don't really like to eat the desserts, I just cook them." The On The Line staff will be over next Friday, Venus!