Venus Williams beats Ivanovic

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She slipped and fell in her first service game, framed a serve earlier — leading to an ugly-looking double fault — and faced three break points.

Every game tells a story.

In this case, it was wildly inaccurate.

No. 12-seeded Venus Williams saved those three break points against No. 5 Ana Ivanovic and steamrollered the Serbian teenager in a 6-4, 6-2 victory Sunday in the fourth round of the U.S. Open. After that, she never faced another break point.

Williams’ purposeful display signaled that, indeed, the second week of the Open has commenced. She made Ivanovic, who recently won an Open tuneup tournament in Carson, look almost pedestrian.

If Williams rendered Ivanovic irrelevant, then top-seeded Justine Henin made No. 15 Dinara Safina look like a 4.0-level USTA league player, winning the first nine games.

Henin defeated Safina, 6-0, 6-2, in 59 minutes and sent her own message to the Williams family. She committed nine unforced errors, including four in the first set.

Certainly, the bar had been raised earlier by the sisters. Venus played after No. 8 Serena, who beat No. 10 Marion Bartoli, 6-3, 6-4, in 1 hour 16 minutes, hitting 10 aces.

The sisters inched toward a possible semifinal meeting here Friday. But for Serena there’s one obstacle named Henin looming large in the quarterfinals Tuesday.