Fed Cup: Serbia’s great triumph vs Slovakia’s great misery
As you know, our reader Marine has recently started her own tennis blog, Tennis Notebook, and she already guest posted here on Women's Tennis Blog. Here article called Top 5 emotional players in women's tennis attracted a lot of comments and was even referred to in one of the most prestigious Serbian newspapers. Now Marine would like to share with you her experience from last weekend's highly dramatic Fed Cup tie in Bratislava, Serbia vs. Slovakia, especially marked by the doubles match which the Serbian team won 2-6 7-5 9-7 after 3 hours 17 min and a 6-2 5-1 and 30-0 deficit.
As I recently announced I went to see the encounter between Serbia and Slovakia so I wanted to share some of my impressions of the action with you.
The first little adventure was actually getting my tickets which I carefully booked a month before. How big was my surprise when I realized that I was supposed to pick them up within a certain time limit and 16th April they were no longer accessible! So the drama started even before the actual match did. I was frantically looking for help because I did not travel from as far as UK to see nothing at all. Fortunately the help came soon and a few minutes afterwards I was sitting comfortably at the arena which was quickly filling up with excited fans.
On the day one I watched both encounters in full. I preferred the match between Dominika Cibulkova vs. Bojana Jovanovski (4-6 6-3 6-1) not only because it was Dominika who won it 
but also because from that point I realized that the players came out to show the fans their best tennis. I loved Dominika’s fighting spirit and enthusiasm and Bojana’s performance was great too, she is on a good way to follow in JJ’s and Ana’s footsteps.
The encounter between Daniela Hantuchova and Ana Ivanovic (2-6 4-6) was exciting although quite one-sided because Ana started to dominate soon in the first set and since then never let Daniela steal her momentum. Read more »
Italian team was short of Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta, and world No.37 Roberta Vinci leading the weakened team wasn’t enough to make Italy closer to their third straight Fed Cup title. Italy lost the Fed Cup semifinal against Russia 5-0.
After the first day of semifinal Fed Cup play against defending champions Italy, favorite Russia is leading 2-0. Vera Zvonareva cruised to a 6-0 6-2 victory over Sara Errani, while Svetlana Kuznetsova worked much harder to earn her point for Russia, defeating Roberta Vinci 6-2 6-7(4) 6-1. Italian team, short of Francesca Schiavone and Flavia Pennetta, now face a difficult task to reach the final of a tournament they have won two years in a row.
Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski played a crucial role in her country’s close 3-2 victory over Canada in the Fed Cup World Group II first round, absolutely completing the void left when Serbia’s major strengths, Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic, said they wouldn’t compete, and her efforts, crowned with amazing result, have now been further recognized with the 2011 Fed Cup by BNP Paribas Heart Award.
