NEW YORK -- For more than five weeks now, Venus Williams has been unbeatable. She has blown through 14 straight matches and dropped only a single set.

No one -- not even Lindsay Davenport (twice) or Jennifer Capriati -- has really come close. And nothing in Wednesday's U.S. Open quarterfinal match suggested that is likely to change. Williams throttled Belgium's Kim Clijsters 6-3, 6-1 to advance to Friday's semifinal against Capriati, who defeated Amelie Mauresmo 6-3, 6-4 on Wednesday night and has yet to drop a set at the Open.

Technically, this should have been a competitive match; Williams is the tournament's No. 4 seed and the previously ascendant Clijsters is No. 5, reflecting their ranking on the WTA Tour. And yet the match required only 65 minutes and was gratuitously violent, in a R-rated kind of way. Williams won nine of the last 10 games.

It is a measure of Williams' growing maturity -- maybe it was just that little cold virus -- that she sounded subdued after the match.

"My unforced errors count was just really high," she said. "I wasn't stringing together the points the way I'd like to, exactly. I did a few good points and then I missed a few easy shots, too. But, in general, a win is a win."

It's easy to be blasé when you've reached your fifth U.S. semifinal in as many tries.

Clijsters had never played Williams before and matches on television, Clijsters allowed, didn't do her justice.

"She hits the ball pretty hard," Clijsters said. "I expected that before I went on the court, but it's still different when you're standing out there and she serves really well.

"I couldn't play my own game a little bit today because she just had the pressure on me the whole time. It's hard because she hits the ball so deep, so it's very hard for you to keep the ball deep, as well. As soon as you hit the ball a little bit short, she just finishes off the court."

That Williams and Clijsters had never met before was, more than anything else, a function of the 18-year-old Belgian's swift rise through the ranks. She materialized two years ago at Wimbledon and made it all the way to the fourth round as a qualifier. Her ranking has soared from No. 409 in 1998, to No. 47 in 1999, to No. 18 in 2000 to the present No. 5.

It was Clijsters who became the first Belgian ever to reach a Grand Slam singles final, at this year's French Open. She extended Capriati, already the Australian Open champion, in the longest third set ever for women at Roland Garros before losing 12-10. Clijsters also has beaten No. 1 seed Martina Hingis, at Indian Wells, and defeated Davenport to win the Stanford tournament in July. Venus, however, was a different planet altogether.

Clijsters actually broke Williams in the match's first game when the defending champion here coughed up three double-faults. It was a gnarly 3-all when Williams finally calibrated her big serve and forehand and went to work.

She shook off a deuce and went up 4-3 with a clean forehand down the line. Another big forehand gave Williams a break and a 5-3 lead. Three deuces later, Clijsters sprayed a backhand service return hopelessly wide and suddenly, despite numerous opportunities, she was down a set.

The second set was grim. Clijsters won the third game on her serve but nothing else. It ended, appropriately, on a double fault.

Statistics in tennis tend to be overrated, but chew on these numbers: Clijsters, a power hitter, had only five winners, compared to a staggering 38 unforced errors. And, she managed only one service break among nine opportunities.

And consider this: Williams, as she was quick to point out, committed 43 unforced errors (versus 21 winners) and still won easily.

Only Venus Williams, it seems, is capable of beating Venus Williams. She has, despite her lithe frame, some of the heaviest groundstrokes in the business. And not only does she have the fastest serve in women's history (127 mph) but also she covers as much ground as anyone.

"Yes," Clijsters said, "she only has to take like two steps to go from one side to the other. She's got great footwork. She moves very well on the court. I mean, she's got everything, I think, to be a top tennis player."

With the Wimbledon title already in hand, a victory here -- despite what the rankings might say -- would make her the top tennis player for 2001.

Her supreme confidence, in full bloom at the age of 21, is what sets her apart from her peers. She doesn't hit every ball hard anymore, much to the surprise of Clijsters. She has a rich variety of slices and spins in her game that make the fastball that much more lethal.

"Nowadays," she said, "I expect to do these things. I expect myself to hit those shots. If I don't, then that's a surprise. So maybe that's why I'm more calm right now. If I win a big point, I've expected to do this.

"That's what I expect of myself."