Six days of watching matches, spying on practice sessions, and slumping in press conferences tends to get a reporter caught up in an occasional story line of dubious significance. I can safely say that one of the major themes of this week will not be written into the tennis-history books. It is this: Jelena Jankovic has a cold. She got it from her mom at the start of the tournament. A few days ago, Jankovic said that she “was getting a lot of guys lately" (to come to her matches?). She thought it might be because they liked her roughed-up cold voice. Even tonight, after her loss to Ana Ivanovic, JJ was asked, one more time, “How’s your cold?” She said she still had it, and was wondering what exactly her mom had given her. Such are the weekly points of intrigue for the hard-digging tennis writer.
Jankovic didn’t blame her loss on her lingering cold. She didn’t seem too broken up about the whole thing in general. But that’s the sense you get from JJ much of the time. It took her a relatively long time to reach this point (she almost quit the game two years ago), and her current Top 5 ranking seems to be both a pleasant surprise and one long bonus in her mind. So she plays as much as possible—every week, in other words—and isn’t devastated if she walks away with a semifinal check before moving on to the next city, where she can pick up quarterfinal money, and so on. How many other players, after an opponent makes a successful replay challenge to reach match point, would laugh and applaud the other player? That’s what Jankovic did in the final game tonight, after Hawk-Eye showed that a stab Ivanovic lob had dropped on the last centimeter of the baseline.
While Jankovic is content with her status, Ivanovic radiates ambition, from her big smile to her squeaky sneakers. The two practiced a few courts away from each other this afternoon, and the atmosphere on each was noticeably different. Jankovic was laconic and ironic as she and her hitting partner worked through each stroke in silence. There’s no extra motion in Jankovic’s strokes—her service motion can be described like this: “toss it and hit it”—and there was no wasted motion in her rapid workout today.
Ivanovic, who looked more striking than the last time I’d seen her on the practice courts, was taking directions from a coach and a hitting partner on both of her strokes. The goals were to get her to “definitely commit” to each shot, as her coach said, and to hit a feathery backhand drop volley crosscourt (kind of an obscure thing to practice before a big semifinal, but they seem to know what they’re doing). Ivanovic was sharp and relaxed and giggly throughout. It was immediate to everyone watching how much understated flair and elegance she brings to all of her shots, especially compared to the utilitarian motions of Jankovic. Many of Ivanovic’s shots produced a “wow” or a “she’s such a clean hitter” from neighboring crowd members. Few connect with the ball as purely. The one thing that her practice session had in common with Jankovic’s was the silent presence of her mom on the sidelines. The two mothers were dead ringers for each other in their monster shades, big blond hair, khaki pants, and off-white shoes.
I walked away fired up for the battle of the Serbs in the desert. They both looked like they were in good form, and they'd played an exciting three-setter on California hard courts last summer. Unfortunately, Friday night’s match began immediately after two marathon three-setters (won by Fish and Kuznetsova), and before the evening session crowd could file in. (I’ll say it again: The tours need to let fans walk to their seats after the first game of each set; three games is too much for a paying customer to be forced to miss while standing behind a rope.) The air had been taken out of the arena. It didn’t help that the Serbs were dressed in similar pink-orange dresses. Somehow I didn't expect the clash of the titans to be contested in vermillion.
The match itself was scratchy and momentum-less. Ivanovic won it with clutch serving, opportunistic forehand play, a bracing toughness and physicality, and the erratic play of Jankovic on the most important points, particularly in the tiebreaker that decided the first set. I watched with fellow writer Joel Drucker, and we agreed that Ivanovic is currently an encouraging work in progress. Her timing is superb—she puts more on the ball than Jankovic without swinging any harder—but Joel pointed out that she can be clumsy in her transition game. She also doesn’t react well to fierce pace that’s directed right at her. Ivanovic isn’t a counterpuncher; she likes to dictate but can be caught flat-footed and handcuffed by a hard-hit ball. Jankovic’s best hope was to dictate play and fire what she could at Ivanovic, but that’s not her style. She’s a counterpuncher through and through, and has trouble commanding the action.
Still, the score was close until the end, and Jankovic had her opportunities. Ivanovic brushed each one aside, often with a big serve. Up a break but down a break point at 4-3 in the second set, she hit an ace out wide in the deuce court, then went back to that corner for a service winner to hold. She ended the match a few minutes after that, first with the stab volley I mentioned earlier—it was as athletic a move as I’ve seen Ivanovic make—and then with a rifled crosscourt forehand return winner on match point. The last shot elicited a tiny, well-earned scream of joy, and one more of the girly, two-part fist-pumps she’s been testing out lately. Those are definitely a work in progress.
Whatever happens on court, it’s Jankovic who usually dominates in the press room. And she was her usual honest, upbeat, wacky self—she said that she had a “bad reaction” to her opponent’s serve tonight, as if she had taken the wrong pill. She also claimed she was going to get a horse for her new home in San Diego, and show up at a local reporter’s home for cookies. This time I was more impressed by Ivanovic’s presser. She’s a world-class giggler and is impossibly enthusiastic and ingenuous about everything. But she also seems to have a clever side. She said at one point that she loves to go to amusement parks, and that during a trip to one in Stuttgart, her former coach had gotten tired as she went from one ride to another. Drucker asked, tongue in cheek, if that’s why she had changed coaches. Ivanovic didn’t miss a beat, answering with a laugh, “that’s right, because he couldn’t keep up with me.”
So she has a sense of humor, and she’s more ambitious than her countrywoman, and her game is getting there, and she’s got a scrappy side, and she looks good rifling crosscourt forehand winners. Maybe tennis has found the Anna it’s been looking for.