Williams had her left knee checked out by a doctor when she flew home to the United States after losing in the third round at Roland Garros, her father said Sunday.

"Her knee was swollen, and she shouldn't have played here," Richard Williams said after watching his other tennis-playing daughter, Serena, beat Dinara Safina 6-2, 6-3 to reach the French Open quarterfinals.

He said he wondered whether something might be wrong with Venus because of some awkward movement during a straight-set loss to Jelena Jankovic on Friday.

"I didn't learn 'till Venus got home that her knee was actually hurting her," he said, adding that joint has troubled her for years.

DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE

Serena Williams began to develop a cynical world view way back in kindergarten, when the games of "Duck, Duck, Goose" never went her way.

"It still hurts to talk about it," she said with a smile Sunday. "I was never 'Goose."'

Williams then delivered a detailed description of how the game is played, beginning, "Basically, all the kids from the class sit in a circle."

She continued: "I didn't have many friends. I never got chosen unless it was about time for recess to be over with."

Then, laughing at her own joke, she said, "Man, I need to talk to a shrink about this. I'm going too far into this. Never mind." And then, for emphasis, she repeated, wistfully: "I was never the Goose."

STOP THE MUSIC

When her French Open opponent took an injury timeout Sunday, Jankovic did what plenty of 22-year-olds would if they wanted to kill some time: She pulled an MP3 player out of her bag.

The chair umpire made the number 4-seeded Serb put it away before she got a chance to listen to any music.

"I didn't know that I'm not allowed to do that," Jankovic said after finishing off her 6-1, 6-1 victory over number 18 Marion Bartoli, the last French singles player in the tournament. "But we're not allowed to have electronics while we are playing."

Bored while Bartoli was off court being treated for a leg problem, Jankovic got out of her changeover chair and hit some practice serves.

"I wanted to play with the ball boy," she said.

Bartoli thought she'd get a lot of help from the home crowd, but instead found herself overwhelmed by the circumstances.

"I felt the pressure when I walked on the court," she said. "Because when you walk on centre-court and have people applauding you, and you have French flags, and you have people ... that say, 'You're the last French player, fight it. It's the match of your life. What are you doing? You're not playing well.' -- I mean, that was a bit difficult for me to listen to."