Jelena Jankovic’s title hopes were dashed at the Australian Open as she was swept away 6-0, 7-5 against world number one Caroline Wozniacki.
The first set saw the top seed in fantastic form, and Jankovic had no reply to the onslaught. However as the game progressed, the Serb improved and she gave Wozniacki a few problems in the second set. Having been demolished in just 34 minutes in the first set, Jankovic upped her game and broke twice to put some pressure back onto the favourite, who has struggled to cope with nerves in the big games sometimes.
This wasn’t enough though, and the Dane did enough to avoid a tie break in the second set, progressing to the quarterfinals.
Wozniacki’s statistics for the match were impressive – putting 72% of her first serves into play, and keeping unforced to errors to 15. Despite this, Jankovic did as much to lose the match as Wozniacki did to win it, with a massive 50 unforced errors and 7 double faults. The Serb can’t expect to win matches at the top level playing such a loose game, and Jelena will be determined to improve her focus and concentration before she competes again.
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Jelena Jankovic, once the world no. 1, has had a bad run in the various tournaments of late. She made it to the quarter finals of the Brisbane International after her opponent had to pull out due to an injury.
After just 50 minutes, her opponent Julia Georges had to retire when she was leading the scores 6-1, 3-1. So Jankovic might have been out of the Brisbane International earlier, had it not been for her opponent’s unfortunate injury.
Following this, she proceeded to the quarter finals where she faced the Italian Francesca Schiavone. She started the match well, dominating the first 3 games in the first set. She was up 3-0, but the Italian rallied to get back and broke Jelena’s serve to get the score back to 3-3.
Jankovic lost her lead and fell behind as the Italian rallied brilliantly to get the next break of serve. Score at 4-3, the Italian lost her lead by having two double faults. This came soon after Jelena called her coach on court for a consult. Having won the first set 5-7, Jelena started the next set strongly, just like she did in her first set. But Schiavone wasn’t going to give up the fight. She battled for her breaks of serve.
Jelena was serving for the match at 5-3 (and being backed by thousands of fans placing tennis bets online) when her serve was broken. Soon after, Jelena conceded two match points to lose the set 7-6. Riding high on the victory of the last set, the Italian Schiavone completely dominated the final set, mostly on basis of her serves.
This was bizarre, considering that she had been struggling with her serves in the first two sets. Jelena lost the match 5-7, 7-6, 6-3, but live to fight another day – and will hopefully hit top form in the Australian Open.
Inspite of her form, Jelena Jankovic has just been signed up to be the face of an international sporting brand.
In an effort to improve her performances and go back to the form that saw her become the number one tennis player in the world, Jelena Jankovic has completely overhauled her coaching staff, hiring Henner Nehles as her new coach and Korey Goodwin as her new fitness instructor. The changes came after Jankovic some extraordinarily low performances by her standards over the last couple of seasons which has seen her rankings slip to 13th.
The Serbian tennis star, although has not won a single Grand Slam title, she was always touted as one of those players who could take the tennis court by storm but other than becoming the number one player in the world in August 2008, Jankovic has not been able to fulfill her potential. She seemed immensely focused on the new season during a recent press conference and said that she was training around 7 to 8 hours a day in order to get in the shape for the upcoming Australian Open, the season’s first Grand Slam tournament.
Jelena Jankovic and her new coaching staff are scheduled to arrive Down Under in a couple of days to train and to get acquainted with the Australian weather Jankovic is hoping that Nehles, who was s standout player in the UNLV and reached a career high 38th position in the NCAA rankings can turn her game around in order for to be able to compete with the new breed of young tennis players like Caroline Wozniacki, Petra Kvitova, Victoria Azarenka and the likes.
Jankovic stated in a press conference that her prime target is to attain peak fitness for which she has set two hours’ time every day after practice. Having won twelve singles title, Jelena Jankovic knows what it takes to reach the top but it will be worth watching her trying to scale the heights once again.
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February 8, 2012 9:08 am | 
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