Tonight I was supposed to chat with Brian Lynch, a.k.a. Mr. Kim Clijsters, before his wife's third-round match with Nadia Petrova. But Lynch, a former Villanova hoopster who met his wife when he was playing pro ball in Belgium, was running late. He had to drop Jada, the couple's 22-month-old daughter, off at the daycare center before heading to Hisense Arena to see Clijsters play, and asked to reschedule for after the match.

Needless to say, the interview didn't happen. Everyone in Clijsters' inner circle is presumably feeling a little dazed in the aftermath of her stunning loss, and not in the mood to discuss the blissful life of the traveling tennis family. In a staggeringly lopsided match that saw the reigning U.S. Open champion win fewer than 30 percent of the points, Petrova advanced, 6-0, 6-1, in just 52 minutes.

Clijsters said she felt okay in her on-court warm-up, despite the sweltering conditions. But once the match began, "I was completely off. ... I didn't feel the ball at all." She made two errors in the first game (an easy hold by Petrova) and then double-faulted on double break point to lose her own opening service game. It never got easier after that. From the fourth game of the first set into the second game of the second, Petrova won 15 points in a row.

"I made all the mistakes and she didn't really have to do much," a dumbstruck Clijsters said afterwards, struggling to explain how her tournament had come to such an abrupt and ugly end. "She served really well and was aggressive in the rallies, but that's because I let her play into the courts. Just because I wasn't feeling the ball well. It sucks."

With a huge serve and forehand, Petrova is certainly a dangerous opponent. The powerful veteran has made at least the quarters of all four majors, and was twice a semifinalist at Roland Garros. But no one — not even the Russian herself — could have foreseen such a dominating victory.

"I was preparing myself [for] a long day, a long match," Petrova said. "Might have been a three-setter."

A notoriously nervous player with a couple of Novotna-esque collapses on her competitive resume, Petrova managed not to get distracted by the ease with which she was winning. Her only difficult game came when she was serving for the match at 5-1, and needed three match points to seal the victory.

"I wasn't thinking anything," she said when asked about her state of mind during the match. "That was a good thing."

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There was nothing good about the evening for the Clijsters camp. It must have been a brutal experience for Lynch to see his wife, a popular pre-tournament pick to win it all, get completely overwhelmed in the third round. And though Clijsters said she's going to try to forget tonight's debacle as quickly as possible, but she must be feeling demoralized by how dramatically her tennis fortunes have swung since last summer.

In September, Clijsters was celebrating her improbable U.S. Open title with a frolicking Jada in Arthur Ashe Stadium. Her happy daughter posed with the champion's trophy in a scene that represented total validation of Clijsters' decision to return to pro tennis. Tonight, after an even more improbable loss, she wasn't regretting her decision to come out of retirement, I'm sure. But I can imagine she's not looking forward to making the 10,000-mile trek home with her toddler, empty-handed.

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