Venus Williams made her customary early exit from Roland Garros yesterday. The third seed slipped to a fourth third-round defeat in five years here.

The American, who has never won the title at Roland Garros, was beaten 0-6, 4-6 by 29th seed Agnes Szavay of Hungary.

"I had a tough day. I didn't get the ball in court so that didn't help," said Williams, the 2002 runner-up here.

"I'm used to beating people 6-0. I'm not used to my shot not going in and losing a set 6-0. It just didn't come together for me." Szavay next plays Dominika Cibulkova, the 20th seed.

Ivanovic, Safina through
Reigning champion Ana Ivanovic and title favourite Dinara Safina continued their ruthless streaks at Roland Garros, both winning their third-round matches in little over an hour.

Eighth seed Ivanovic thrashed Iveta Benesova, ranked 35th in the world, 6-0 6-2.

"The score doesn't indicate how hard I had to work for some points," said Ivanovic.

Top seed Safina raced to a 6-2 6-0 victory over fellow Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova on Court One to set up a meeting with Rezai.

Neither Ivanovic nor Safina, who lost just three points in the opening five games of the second set, have dropped a set this week. They should meet in the quarter-finals.

Sharapova wins
Former world number one Maria Sharapova recovered from a dreadful start to advance into Round Four.

The Russian, who is ranked 102 in the world after being sidelined with shoulder problems for nearly a year, beat Kazakhstan's Yaroslava Shvedova 1-6 6-3 6-4. Sharapova will next play 25th seed Na Li of China , who defeated Olga Govortsova 7-5 6-1.