PARIS -- Nice way to treat a lady ... the defending champion ... the once and future feel-good girl of tennis ... the one with the apparent hottest new celebrity romance on tour (Chandler Bing? Didn't he marry Monica or Rachel or Joey or somebody?).

	Jennifer Capriati has lost her past four matches with Serena Williams and is 0-4 against Venus Williams.

First, they kept throwing Jennifer Capriati out there after 7 p.m. practically every night. Then they moved her fourth-round match to another court. Then she had to finish the quarterfinals under cover of nightfall way across the grounds out there on Court Suzanne Lenglen. Well, that's where they also made all the other women play on Tuesday. "I know it's paying respects to her (Lenglen)," Capriati said, "but the quarters should be on center court. They need to name the center 'Suzanne Lenglen.' "

What? Hilarity from The Capster? Maybe it's the Florida girl's way of whistling past the graveyard. Because now the French Open draw has revealed, as if we didn't suspect it all along, that she's the only barrier left to keep another Grand Slam championship from becoming another trophy addition to the Williamsonian Museum.

In all probability Capriati must beat both Serena Williams and Venus Williams back-to-back, belly-to-belly, at the Amazombie Jamboree, to win her second straight title. Unless, of course, somebody named Clarisa Fernandez -- no relation to either Clarisa Starling or Mary Jo Fernandez -- takes her world No. 87 ranking, engraves it on an iron pipe and beats Venus over the head with it. In other words, Fernandez, 20, the second-lowest ranked player ever to reach the semis here (Frenchwoman Brigitte Simon was No. 99 in 1978), has about as much chance as Portugal.

(Or as much as Andre Agassi had against Juan Carlos Ferrero in the wet, windy heavy slop of Roland Garros on Wednesday. The Little Mosquito broke Agassi in the first game, won seven of the first 10, 6-3, 1-0, and was about to mud-ball Double A quickly out of the French before proceedings were called to a halt by the rain at 7:20 p.m. -- letting the 'Skeeter think about his lead overnight until Thursday, when presumably the sun and Andre's Double A game will shine again.)

But does Capriati have any better odds of sweeping a doubleheader against the Sisters Sledge, who've made a recent hobby of hammering her at every turn? "Now that it's finally here, we can talk about it," Capriati said after she let another big lead dwindle and had to put on a late charge to whip Jelena Dokic 6-4, 4-6, 6-1 in that dim, dark quarterfinal. "But I'm playing good tennis. I'm confident. It's a pretty big task. But this is what really starts to fuel my fire."

Uh, hold the hoses.

	“	I don't necessarily want to be No. 2 in my career. I would like to be better than that. ”
		— Serena Williams

Capriati started defending her twin Grand Slam titles of 2001 in Australia in sensational fashion by recovering from a 4-6, 0-4 deficit against the star-crossed Martina Hingis to become the first woman to save four match points in a Grand Slam final. But since then, she has been on a physical and emotional teeter-totter, if that bewildering meltdown (catfight?) with captain Billie Jean King that got her thrown off the Fed Cup team is any indication. (Hey, shouldn't a girl be able to hit some practice balls with her dad if she wants to?)

Against the Williamses, moreover, Capriati is on a disastrous downward spiral. She has lost to Serena four straight times, three of them this year. In the finals at Scottsdale, in the finals at Miami -- where she served for both sets, holding seven set points in the second -- and in the semifinals at the Italian Open where she held a 3-0 lead in the deciding third set with a couple of points for 4-0. Talk about trouble closing out.

Then there's Capriati's record against Venus -- who not only will replace Jennifer as No. 1 following Paris no matter what happens in the next few days, but who also has never lost to her. Surely Capriati remembers best the finals in Miami last year when she held another eight match points on the older sister before losing in a third-set tiebreak. But there were two other defeats, at New Haven and in the semifinals of the U.S. Open -- where Capriati initially had a chance to prevent the first All-Williams, All-The-Time Slam championship tussle and failed, even after rushing to a 4-1 lead in the first set. She collapsed and lost that one 6-4, 6-2.

On the eve of her match with Serena, though, Jennifer found some positives. "I'm going in there thinking she's the one to beat now," Capriati said. "She's playing well and on top of her game, but we haven't played in a Grand Slam in a while and sometimes she gets nervous in the Slams ... or maybe she doesn't play as well ... or I play better."

Whatever. Their last meeting in a major was just last year in Wimbledon when Capriati did prevail, sure enough, in three sets. But the smart Euros have been on Serena to win this thing since Roland Garros started -- and her 6-1, 6-1 quarterfinals demolition of Mary Pierce (who was coming back from nearly two years of injuries-forced inaction) didn't convince anybody otherwise. Including the winner.

Reporter A: "Neither of you (sisters) have been past the quarterfinals before here."

Serena: "Unlike you guys, I don't normally keep up with the nonsense stats."

Reporter B: "You may dismiss it as meaningless stats, but if you beat Jennifer, you'll be No. 2 and you and your sister will finally fulfill what your dad predicted."

Serena: "I don't necessarily want to be No. 2 in my career. I would like to be better than that."

But Williams One ain't going nowhere soon, and if Williams Two gets by Capriati, undoubtedly there will be a familiar face waiting across the net to have another dusty discussion with her sister about that.

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.