Excuses! Excuses!

Serena Williams, for one, apparently likes them. Practically never lost a match at Wimbledon, in fact, without offering one.

	At the Australian Open earlier this year, Serena Williams said a stomach ailment prevented her from playing at peak performance against Martina Hingis.

Half of the Sisters Williams, two of tennis' top women's players, Serena Williams cited nausea as the culprit that cost her Tuesday's quarterfinal match with Jennifer Capriati. To be fair, she did, well, excuse herself for a potty break during the match. She trailed Capriati, winner of this year's Australian Open and French Open, 4-0 in the decisive third set when nature called.

"I went to the doctor twice." Williams said after the match. "It was gas. I don't know, gastromunical [sic] virus, viral infection. I've been taking a lot of Pepto-Bismol, Immodium AD, things like that. I was in pain, yeah, for sure. Nausea.

"Right now I have the chills. I don't feel well. I have a horrible headache. I'm not alive right now."

A doctor at Wimbledon later diagnosed Serena Williams as having gastroenteritis, prompting the Williams sisters to withdraw from the doubles competition for the second straight Grand Slam event.

Said Capriati: "Basically, every time I play (her), I'm pretty much used to something going on there."

Capriati is not the only person to face interruptions during a match with Serena Williams.

"A lot of times when she's down, something happens with the trainer going on the court," said Lindsay Davenport, who advanced through the quarterfinals Tuesday. "It happened to me at the U.S. Open (quarterfinals in 2000) when I was beating her."

It was the third time in four years that Williams has claimed she was defeated not so much by her Wimbledon opponent but by either illness or injury. Once, in 1999, she withdrew the week before the famed grass tournament complaining of the flu and a high fever.

In 1998, Williams' first Wimbledon, she withdrew from her third-round match with Virginia Ruano-Pascual of Spain. Trailing 7-5, 4-1, and with little hope of facing her older sister, Venus, in the next round, Serena walked off the court without shaking the winner's hand. She said she could play no longer after hurting her left calf early in the first set.

"I guess it was a little unusual," Serena said after giving Ruano-Pascual the cold shoulder.

She later added: "At that moment in time, I could have carried on if I wanted to, but I have to think about the future. I don't want to hurt myself over something silly and be out for maybe two months because I didn't stop."

	Venus Williams consoled Serena after defeating her younger sister in the semifinals at Wimbledon 2000.

To be fair, Williams took the blame for her semifinal loss to her sister Venus last year. "I just didn't play well today," she said. "It just didn't go right for me."

Over her five-year professional career, Serena Williams has blamed at least two other Grand Slam losses on something or someone. Earlier this year, it was food poisoning that she said cost her a quarterfinal match with Martina Hingis, and in 1999, it was a controversial "bad call" that unrattled her in a third-round loss to Sandrine Testud in the Australian Open.

"I just think my problem is I'm a hypochondriac," Williams said Tuesday. "[That's] someone that is always prone to get sick, prone to get hurt and injured, more prone than the next individual. That's me.

"Under hypochondriac, they should put: 'Serena Williams.' "

Kevin Ball is a senior editor at ESPN.com. He can be reached at kevin.ball@espn.com.

Wire service reports contributed to this report.