Venus Williams bows out of Charleston WTA

Venus Williams lost to Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan 7-6 (5), 2-6, 6-4 while top-seeded Angelique Kerber, the defending champion, advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over Slovakia's Kristina Kucova on Thursday.

Williams looked like she would join the reigning Australian Open champion, up 2-1 in the third set of her match. But instead, the 21-year-old Putintseva won five of the final seven games to oust the 35-year-old American.

Kerber will face Irina-Camelia Begu on Friday while Putintseva will face fifth-seeded Sara Errani, a 6-4, 7-6 (5) winner over No. 10 seed Samatha Stosur. Begu topped Puerto Rico's Monica Puig 6-1, 2-6, 7-6 (4).

No. 7 seed Sloane Stephens, the lone American left, will take on 14th-seeded Daria Kasatkina of Russia. Stephens defeated 12th-seeded Daria Gavrilova of Australia 6-4, 6-3 while Kasatkina topped America's wild-card entrant Louisa Chirico 6-0, 6-4.

Russian qualifier Vesnina beat Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain 6-1, 6-3, settin up match-up with Germany's Laura Siegemund, who topped Mirijana Lucic-Baroni of Croatia 7-5, 6-2.

Kerber needed a third-set tiebreaker to move on in her first match on Tuesday night, saying many of her errors came from making the transition from hard courts to the first clay event of the season.

Kerber broke her opponents' serve seven times and said she began to the feel the excitement here she did a year ago when she captured the title.

Putintseva fought through five deuces, three of them with Williams a point away from going up 3-1, to tie the third set and then run out to a 4-2 lead.

After Williams rallied back a final time, Putintseva bore down to close out the victory. Putintseva defeated 2009 winner Sabine Lisicki on Wednesday before her win over Williams, the 2004 champion here.

Putintseva jumped around after the victory, pumping her fists and celebrating. Ranked 61st in the world, she entered the match with a 3-14 record all-time against players in the top 20.

It's the third straight time Williams was gone before the quarterfinals in her past three events at Indian Wells, Miami and now Charleston.