Who’d You Rather: Ana or Jelena?
Join us for the men’s Australian Open final! We’ll be blogging live on Sunday morning, January 27, at 12:30am (PST)/3:30am (EST)/9:30am (CET). We’ll stay up if you’ll stay up.
Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic exchanged places in the rankings, Novak Djokovic breezed through his first round match at the Australian Open, and Viktor Troicki ain’t looking too bad either.
I was watching Viktor Troicki play his first round match against Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open today and a thought hit me: Could it be? Is net play actually coming back into fashion? In case you’ve forgotten, net play is the act of approaching the net by choice instead of necessity.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga took Andy Murray out yesterday by pressuring him at the net early in the match and here was Troicki hitting a forehand slice approach to get his butt to the net against Nadal. Nadal won the match 7-6(3), 7-6, 6-1, but it was closer than the score indicated and Troicki looked good. As Nadal said, “He played very, very aggressively.”
Troicki is a 6′4” (193 cm) player from Serbia who is ranked 126 in the world. Hardly seems fair that Serbia might have another promising player to add to Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic, and Novak Djokovic.
While I’m on about the Serbs, I’d like to elaborate on a point I made about Jelena in my post yesterday. Jelena is one of my favorite players because she’s an idealist. She isn’t grinding for points and money, she wants to get the number one ranking and that’s why she’s out here. If tennis doesn’t work out, she has an alternative plan. She’ll return to Megatrend University in Belgrade – I hope it’s a business school with a name like that, complete her education and be happy to do so.
Here’s the question: How idealistic is Jelena?
If she really is interested only in the number one ranking, will she drop out of tennis and return to University if her ranking drops down to, say, the thirties? Or will she hang around for as many years as possible extracting every last bit of life out of tennis. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you, but there’s something very appealing about someone who has other fish to fry. Someone who thinks of something else besides accumulating as much money has humanly possible. It’s a rare thing in today’s world.
Most tennis players hang around as long as possible and do little afterwards, but I have hope for Jelena because she’s different. She’s unconventional in a way that her fellow Serb, Ivanovic, is conventional. Jelena is unconventionally beautiful and unconventionally outspoken. Okay, Ivanovic is a smoldering hot beauty, but she’s the last person likely to say anything remotely controversial. She cares way too much.
It cannot be easy for Jelena to be compared to Ivanovic. Jelena has lost to her five out of the six times they’ve played and Ivanovic just took away Jelena’s number three ranking. Not only that but Ivanovic is already a sex symbol and she just signed a racket deal with Yonex that could pay her more than $10,000,000 over four years.
Ivanovic is only 20 years old so who knows how she’ll develop and mature as a person. But for my money, I’ll take the devil may care Jelena any day.
I Told Ya So
Stefan Koubek took out Carlos Moya today, 7-6(5), 6-7(2-7), 7-5, 6-4. I told you Moya would not get to a fourth round matchup with Nadal. This is the fourth year in a row Moya has lost in the first round.
I know you all disagree with my Gasquet pick - I have him beating Nadal and getting to the final - but the way Nadal looked today I might not be far off. He struggled at times.
Farid, you were right about Ivan Ljubicic. He’s out already after losing to Robin Haase in four sets. Are James Blake’s chances looking any better right about now?
This entry was posted
on Monday, January 14th, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Viktor Troicki, Carlos Moya, Stefan Koubek, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Robin Haase, Ivan Ljubicic, Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic, Rafael Nadal, ATP Players, Novak Djokovic, Richard Gasquet, James Blake, Andy Murray, Australian Open.
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4 Responses to “Who’d You Rather: Ana or Jelena?”
January 15th, 2008 at 11:41 am
hi nina,jame`s chances doesn`t chang after ljubicic went out of the tournament ,in fact if they were supposed to meet in the round of 32,besides their head to head records,james would destroy ivan.blake`s most difficult match is coming in round two against a pit bull(russell),well i`ll tell you why:1-the plexicushion is too slow than normal hard court surfaces which will be disastrous for blake.and although the heavy balls suits blake(because he is strong),the balls will fluff up after 10 or 15 minutes and that makes the court seems slower.2-their only meetings in 2007 us open 1st round was a straight sets win for james but it was a tough battle with two tie-breakers (7/6 6/3 7/6).3-russell is a guy who can run all day long and return all the balls especially on this slow court and make blake to go for too much and finally make unforced error.besides if james get through this one he will be faces haase or grosjean,and haase is no slouch nor will be grosjean but i`ll favor james in that one and in the fourth round there will be cilic or lee(i`m sure lee will put out gonzalez in the 2nd round),which is not easy match,but after all i`m looking forward to see a federer blake quarter-final(peronally i really like blake,he`s one of my favourite player to watch) and that`s as far as blake can go,bye.
January 15th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Hi Farid, Really, you think Lee will beat Gonzalez? Lee hasn’t been past the third round of a tournament since Beijing and it was Gonzalez who beat him there.
I think you’re right about the speed of the court and the big fuzzy balls. Those two things certainly don’t favor Blake to get very far but Michael Russell still can’t make it into the top 100. He’s kind of like a muscular Paul Goldstein. I say Blake gets thru that.
January 16th, 2008 at 8:36 am
jo nina,tennis is about form,for instance if ljubo and blake were supposed to play, ljubo is leading the head to head by 4-1 but i would put my house on it that blake would win that match.th same is about lee and gonzalez,in kooyong gonzalez hardly can put the ball into play and in his 1st round match against economidis we saw 2 tight sets which could have been won by economidis.about blake vs. russell i also mentioned that blake will go throuth that one and hopefully he can make it to the q.f. but i see that match a tough one(not a walk in the park for james).
January 16th, 2008 at 8:43 am
hi nina,tennis is about form,in fact if ljubo and james would supposed to play in the 4th round despite the head to head that favors the croat i would put my house on it that james would win that one,the same can be said about gonzalez ,in kooyong he can hardly put the ball into play and in his 1st round match against economidis we saw 2 tight set which could have been won by economidis,gonzalez is far away from his good form,about blake,i never said that he will lose to russell but i said it will be a tough match and i also mentioned that blake can go to the quarters where he will be facing federer and that`s as far as he can go(it won`t be a walk in the park for james in r2).
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