Australian Open is over for Serbia’s WTA players, Jankovic and Jovanovski out

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Wilson Blade 9

When Serbia’s Ana Ivanovic exited the Australian Open as early as the first round, there was still hope for her country with two strong players left in the draw, the established Jelena Jankovic and young star Bojana Jovanovski. However, both of them were defeated in the following round of the tournament, and both the losses happened on the Hisense Arena.

Even though Jankovic was leading 5-2 in the first set against Shuai Peng, the seventh-seeded 2008 Australian Open semifinalist allowed the 54th-ranked Peng to recover and force a tiebreak, which she won 7-3. A decisive break in the sixth game of the second set allowed Peng to progress to the Australian Open third round for the second time in her career. Final score: 7-6(3) 6-3.

The match between 19-year-old Bojana Jovanovski and second seed Vera Zvonareva followed. The bright Serbian prospect may have lost the match, but not before scaring Zvonareva by winning the first set 6-2. The final score was 2-6 6-3 6-1.

Third seed Kim Clijsters is confirming her dominant status, as she followed her 6-0 6-0 victory over Dinara Safina, with a 6-1 6-3 win over Carla Suarez Navarro in the second round. The match involved eight successive games won by Clijsters.

Besides Jelena Jankovic, seeds that fell on Day 4 include: No.18 Maria Kirilenko who lost to Iveta Benesova 6-3 6-1, No.26 Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez who was defeated by Alize Cornet 7-5 6-1, and No.24 Alisa Kleybanova who fell to Simona Halep 6-4 7-6(2). (photo: uristilman)

2 COMMENTS

  1. JJ, I understand you need matches to get into your game, but since Wimbledon last year you haven’t won 3 matches in a row!!! Ana syndrom perhaps?! I think she should finally get serious if she wants great acomplishments again. As for Bojana, too bad she lost, but Zvonareva is no.2 for a reason. I really like her agressive game, and I hope in some time soon she’ll grow into a great player, ’cause she really has potential.

  2. JJ always says she needs matches to order to play her best tennis. That’s fair enough, but what I really don’t understand is her scheduling for the AO. She is good on hardcourts, and if she was in good form, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to have her as a contender for any of the hardcourt majors. So why does she enter Sydney, when she is going to be rusty from not playing, and is likely to face a tough opponent in the first round, as she has done for the last two years? The years JJ has done reasonably well at the Australian Open, she has played at least one warm-up event and played more than one match (2007 – Auckland, Sydney; 2008 – Hopman Cup, Sydney; even 2009 she played an exhibition event in Hong Kong). I understand that as she is a top 10 player, she can only play one International event in the first half of the year, but why not choose to play Brisbane, Auckland or Hobart (and maybe play some doubles too!), or find someone to play Hopman Cup with, and develop her match-play? She would then enter the Australian Open in (hopefully) reasonable form and she can then build her season from there, and then she wouldn’t need to use her one International event as a confidence-finding trip later on in the season.

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