PARIS -- While Martina Hingis and the two new Belgian waffles, Kim Clijsters, 17, and Justin Henin, 18, routined their quarterfinal opponents in the French Open -- Francesca Schiavone (no relation to My Sharona) from Italy, Petra Mandula from Hunger, uh, Hungary, and Lina Krasnoroutskaya from Cedar Rapids -- Jennifer Capriati produced the usual drama whenever she finds herself across the net from a Williams sister.

At the Ericsson in Key Biscayne in March Capriati had eight match points on Venus Williams in the third set before, like, uh, choking? -- and losing the title. At Roland Garros on Tuesday, The Capster was dominating Serena Williams this time, ready to close her out in straights, 6-2, 6-4, when on match point she, like, uh, choked? -- and floated a double fault into the net.

"I was just thinking, oh, s---. Probably, worse than that," Capriati said. "I just tried to put it out of my mind. I mean, I was, like, okay, you know?"

And, peculiarly enough, we, like, I mean, you know, did.

Capriati settled back down and went on to defeat Williams for the third straight time, 6-2, 5-7, 6-2. But not before her mind wandered back to that debacle against her opponent's sister -- as well as, presumably, all the way back to 11 years ago when she was the youngest woman to get this far at the French.

"I just remember everything came very easy back then," Capriati said.

Forget her depth, consider her youth -- Capriati was barely two months past her 14th birthday when she also won that quarters match and then lost to the eventual champion, Monica Seles, in the semis -- and it's fairly easy to realize what an astounding career of chutes and ladders she's been through. Not only through the "the little dude [Napoleon]" quotes and the Barcelona Olympics championship and the Florida drug busts and the Wherever re-habs and her parents' divorce. This year her mother, having recovered from hip surgery, and her coaching father are both watching from the VIP seats. But now through a thoroughly heartwarming season in which she's already beat her next opponent, the world number one Hingis, twice -- for the championships of Australia (the Australian Open) and South Carolina (the Family Circle Cup at Charleston).

Just as significant, of course, Capriati continues to rip asunder her long-ago teenage records in interviews for "You Know's" as well as assorted other conversational gems. Her 32 and 14 in 18 numbers in her fifth tournament match brought her totals for this Roland Garros to 103 You Know's and 38 I Mean's in 61 questions, as tabulated by Mark Winters of Oakland-based Inside Tennis.

"With two more possible matches on the horizon, J-Cap is going to take those numbers, like, you know, to the freaking moon!" said Winters, who still refuses to reveal why he is not counting Capriati's use of her favorite pause, "Like."

Be that as it may, it would be folly not to acknowledge how the women's tour has turned so soapily dramatic in the last few rounds. There's not merely been Capriati and Williams and Hingis -- who somehow avoided being smacked in the head with an egg thrown on the court in her match against Sandrine Testud. But how about the victims of Jennifer and Serena in the previous rounds, Zsofia Gubasci and Mirjana Lucic?

Gubasci is a 20-year-old from Budapest who was playing in her first senior event, plagued by the heartbreak that her parents had broken off contact with her since she fell in love with the 40-year old former Hungarian soccer star, Sandor Sallai. Gubasci's father, Mihaly, gave her a Mercedes for her 18th birthday but when she was thrown out of the house when romance blossomed, the car was confiscated.

Lucic, of course, is the now-19-year-old Croatian who reached the '99 Wimbledon semifinals against her lookalike, Steffi Graf. Since then, however, in addition to being blighted with several injuries and wearing black constantly, she had to flee her country in the dead of night to America to avoid an abusive father who threatened to kill her.

Oh well. Things could be worse for the tour. The WTA could have been invited to the royal dinner in Katmandu.

Curry Kirkpatrick, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, first covered the French Open in 1976. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.