PARIS - American 11th seed Venus Williams was sensationally dumped out of the French Open on Friday by 15-year-old Bulgarian Sesil Karatantcheva who won their third round tie 6-3, 1-6, 6-1.
The Bulgarian, the reigning French Open junior champion, now goes on to face either France's Emilie Loit or Italy's Emmanuelle Gagliardi for a place in the quarter-finals.
Williams went into the tie the overwhelming favourite, boasting a career with 32 titles and almost 15 million dollars in prize money.
In stark comparison, her opponent is ranked just 98 and has pocketed just 79,000 dollars in her brief career but has shown her potential already this year reaching the quarter-finals on the Gold Coast in January.
Now Karatantcheva will face the hype of being touted as possibly the youngest ever winner of the French Open women's singles title, an honour currently held by Monica Seles who took the trophy in 1990 at 16 years and 6 months old.
"Maybe I went for it too much, basically there were just too many errors," said Williams who was runner-up here in 2002.
"It's very disappointing. I had never heard of her before or seen her but if I had played just 10-percent better, I would have won.
"I kind of beat myself. But I still feel like I can be a great player again."
Playing in just her fifth tour event of the season, Karatantcheva refused to be overawed by her four-time Grand Slam title winning opponent even managing to hold her nerve after being blown away in the second set.
In an error strewn first set, where there were six breaks of serve, it was Karatantcheva who eventually settled the quicker and gained a decisive break in the seventh game to lead 5-2.
She then handed the break back but kept her cool to take the set when Williams served up a fifth double fault.
However, it was like the Venus of old in the second set as she threatened to crush the spirit of the teenager levelling the tie with three breaks.
In a nervy finale, Karatantcheva broke to lead 1-0 before Williams hit back straightaway to level at 1-1.
The Bulgarian, with steely character, then edged ahead on another break to go 2-1 and repeated the dose to go 4-1.
She secured the match in the seventh game when Williams hit a lacklustre volley wide.

05/27/2005 18:26 GMT