THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS -- If official statistics were tallied for fist pumps and self-exhortations during Grand Slam matches, Ana Ivanovic might well have established a record while winning her French Open semifinal.
Perhaps Ivanovic did not raise a clenched hand and let out a yelp after each of the 96 points she earned. It sure did seem that way to the woman she beat 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 Thursday, Jelena Jankovic, who mocked the gesture at least twice, drawing guffaws from fans.
There was plenty at stake, and nerves clearly were raw.
The winner was assured of replacing Maria Sharapova at No. 1 in the rankings, in addition to earning a berth in Saturday's championship match against 13th-seeded Dinara Safina. The younger sister of two-time major champion Marat Safin followed up her twin escape-from-match-point-down, three-set upsets of Sharapova and No. 7 Elena Dementieva with a straightforward 6-3, 6-2 victory over No. 4 Svetlana Kuznetsova to reach her first Grand Slam final.
"I won in two sets," Safina said with a smile. "That's strange for me."
The men's semifinals Friday feature No. 1 Roger Federer vs. unseeded Gael Monfils, and No. 2 Rafael Nadal vs. No. 3 Novak Djokovic.
The No. 2-seeded Ivanovic and No. 3 Jankovic produced a seesaw struggle filled with stretches of alternately brilliant and bad play by two women who are both from Serbia but hardly best friends.
"The match was really emotional," said Ivanovic, twice a finalist at majors but never a champion.
Jankovic led 3-0 at the start. Ivanovic, though, won 16 of 18 points to end the first set, part of a six-game spurt. Then Jankovic used a seven-game run to claim the second set and a 2-0 lead in the third. And, rising to the occasion, Ivanovic took the final three games.
"I let it slip away," acknowledged the 23-year-old Jankovic, who was asked what she would do Thursday night and replied: "I will have some dinner and maybe get drunk."
As for all of her fist pumps and shouts, Ivanovic explained: "It was a way to relieve ... pressure, emotions I was feeling, and it worked well for me today. I didn't think about it. It just came natural."
Twice in the second set, Jankovic turned her back to Ivanovic and mimicked her uppercuts.
"For me, it's really funny the way she does that, and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, each of us, we have our own way to, how to say, pump ourselves up. The way she does -- I just imitated it," said Jankovic, now 0-4 in Grand Slam semifinals.
"I saw her doing that, so that's why I did it," Jankovic said. "The crowd enjoyed it, for some reason."
Jankovic was limited by a right forearm injury that bothered her so much earlier in the tournament that she flew home to Belgrade to visit her doctor. She began the semifinal with a bandage wrapped around the arm, but took it off while trailing in the second set.
"I had problems hitting the ball as hard as I could," Jankovic said, "and she was the more powerful one."
Ivanovic finished with a 50-16 edge in winners, but that doesn't indicate just how many terrific baseline exchanges there were, filled with well-angled shots and on-the-run retrieving. On points that lasted at least 10 strokes, Ivanovic won 20, and Jankovic won 19.
"She loves to defend and to run, so you just have to take these kind of risks -- and believe," Ivanovic said. "Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't."
At the very end, it worked. After double-faulting to hand Jankovic a 4-3 lead in the final set, Ivanovic turned things around by hitting a forehand winner followed by a backhand passing winner for break points. She converted with a forehand right on a line to get to 4-4.
Ivanovic held to 5-4, then used her best shot -- her forehand -- to great effect. Her four points in the last game were earned with a forehand return, a drop shot, an inside-out forehand, and a forehand return.
"She kind of woke up," said Ivanovic's coach, Sven Groeneveld.
Each time Ivanovic won a point, Groeneveld was celebrating right along with her, rising from his seat in the player guest box to applaud loudly and shout encouragement. He won't be back in that spot Saturday: Rather than working directly for Ivanovic, he is employed by her apparel sponsor -- which she happens to share with Safina.
It was the same situation a year ago, when Ivanovic made her Grand Slam final debut at the French Open and managed to win only three games against the now-retired Justine Henin, another player linked to that sponsor.
Ivanovic was only slightly better in the Australian Open final in January, when she won eight games in a straight-set loss to Sharapova.
"I really hope I can step up this time," Ivanovic said.
Safina's lack of big-match experience certainly didn't hurt against Kuznetsova, who entered the day 3-0 in major semifinals. Neither played particularly well -- 46 of 122 points ended with unforced errors. There also were seven breaks of serve in the first 11 games.
"I was too tight," Kuznetsova said, "and she was too confident."
Like her brother -- who won the 2000 U.S. Open and 2005 Australian Open -- Safina has been known to show flashes of temper, but it was Kuznetsova who smacked one ball into the 12th row behind the opposite baseline after one missed forehand. Even when she double-faulted for the fifth time, Safina simply stood still at the baseline -- no scream, no spike of her racket.
As she tried to serve out the match while leading by a set and 5-2 in the second -- the precise margin by which she trailed in the fourth round and quarter-finals -- Safina fell behind love-30. She would later say that she thought to herself then: "Don't be passive, like the other ones did with me."
Simple as that, Safina won the next four points to end the match. She raised her arms over her head and looked into the stands at her mom, who flashed a thumbs-up sign.
No comments:
Post a Comment