Anne Marie Stark Djokovic fell to Roddick again.

SUNDAY, AUG. 16 – After a restful vacation on the Montenegro beaches, Jelena Jankovic is joyful again and says that she has put her horrific first half of the year behind her.
It’s hard to know whether the bounce in her step will be getting a lot of air time by the end of the summer, but she said she would forget about her poor Slam results and focus on the task at hand, which is regain a measure of respectability, and back up her claim that when she’s right in the head and sound of body, that’s she can be the world best.
“I was playing without enjoyment and I had no passion and if you aren’t passionate and having fun it’s not the same,” Jankovic said. “You are too nervous and my game was breaking down and you not the same player anymore.”
At Stanford, she let go of match points against Marion Bartoli and on Saturday night in Cincy against Elena Dementieva, nearly let the same fate befall her but scratched out an 8-6 in the third set break win.It’s taken a good part of the year, but former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic showed that her speed and quick-fisted attack hasn’t completely disappeared when she dismantled the enigmatic No. 1 Dinara Safina 6-4, 6-2 to win the Cincinnati.
It’s taken a good part of the year, but former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic showed that her speed and quick-fisted attack hasn’t completely disappeared when she dismantled the enigmatic No. 1 Dinara Safina 6-4, 6-2 to win the Cincinnati.
Jankovic, who has had a miserable year at the Slams, recently said that she was refreshed and ready to take on the last portion of the year with a vengeance, but clearly, she needed a major boost of confidence and finally got one.
At Stanford, she let go of match points against Marion Bartoli and on Saturday night in Cincy against Elena Dementieva, nearly let the same fate befall her but scratched out an 8-6 in the third set break win.
But then on Sunday against Dinara Safina in the Cincy final , she was fleet, smart and lethal from inside the baseline, taking far more chances than the flat Russian, who showed almost no spunk in the contest.
“It's a good win for me, I'm happy that I'm back," said Jankovic, who climbed to No. 4 in the rankings. "I'm really pleased that I was able to play well today and beat the top player in the world. got quite a few good wins under my belt this week, which is very good for my confidence coming into the U.S. Open. I'm back in this group of (top) players and hopefully I can keep my form up."

Jankovic’s game plunged to almost fathomless depths after 2008, when she snared the year’s end top spot by grinding away in the fall with a large amount of success. As all of her fans know, she blames a wrong-headed off-season training program for the results, where she put on 15 pounds, mostly muscle, as she hit the weight room and the track for short sprints.
“Every year I was making improvement and last year finished strong and I was beating all the top players and I was starting to dominate women’s tennis. Then I did all the running and lifting weights… Doing things not related to things that puts you off and can make you slower. I could hit harder but I lost explosiveness and in tennis that’s the most important thing.”
Instead of prospering, Jankovic lost her style base, as she was no longer able to tirelessly counterpunch foes to death from off the court, which at least partly explains her hair-pulling losses to Bartoli in Australia, to Sorana Cirstea at Roland Garros and to Melanie Oudin at Wimbledon.
But now she says she feel like dancing again and for the first time all year, when she goes to practice, is loving sprinting side to side.
“It’s amazing,” she said. “I’m re-charged. I have a clear mind for the second part of the season. What’s done is done and I want to be in the moment and go forward and get back to my form. I know I can play and move well and compete with the top players as good as I was, if not better.”
Jankovic, who was the 2008 year-end No. 1, says it’s important to be consistent, and if a player is losing in the first rounds of the WTA tournaments outside of the Grand Slams, she’s digging herself a deep hole.
The Serbian is nothing if not bold. Recentlt, when asked about who the tour’s real No.1 is, Jankovic said that in her mind, Safina is not the world’s best player. She said that it’s important to play well in between the Slams and credited with Safina for doing so, but wouldn’t buy into the Russian as the tour’s true dominator. “I think I’m the best player and I should always think like that, but if I had to pick someone after me, I’d pick Serena,” she said. “Serena moves well, is strong and more complete. To be number one, you should be complete and if you are number one you have to be beating the Williams sisters. I’m one of the rare players who has a positive record against the Williams sisters (Jankovic is 5-4 against Venus and 3-4 against Serena). Safina has beaten both of them twice (she’s 2-9 combined against the sisters). If you want to be No. 1, you have to be up there with them.”
Safina is a combined 2-9 against the Williams sisters, but says that Jankovic’s perception of what should define the number one ranking is ill conceived.
“The ranking system is not only based if you beat Serena and Venus,” she said. “It’s based on how you play the whole year. It has nothing to do with what your record is against them. Did she beat them in the final of a Grand Slam? No. It doesn’t count when you beat them at a Tier IV [tournament].”
But is was JJ who backed up that claim in Cincy.
"This is my time to come back,” she said. “I love playing on hard courts. I'm moving very well again and my game is coming back. I'm positive. I'm out there with a smile on my face, and I bring some, how do you say, interesting things into tennis again. Every match I got better and better and at the end, I won the title. It's a big title and it's been a while since I have done this. Hopefully I can continue with the consistent results."

Montreal: No. 2 Murray v. del Potro
Cincy: Safina v. JJ

SATURDAY, AUG. 15 - Summer hardcourt lover Andy Murray and the red hot Juan Martin Del Potro will meet in the Montreal final on Sunday. Murray snared the No. 2 ranking from Rafael Nadal by beating Jo Wilfried-Tsonga 6-4, 7-6, while the Argentine took out Andy Roddick again, this time 4-6 6-2 7-5. Murray's win over Tsonga made him the highest-ranked Briton since ATP rankings began. Nadal and Federer have held over the top two spots since July 2005. I massive overstatement when concerning six-time Slam winner Nadal, Murray said,
"For five years it's been Rafa and Roger one and two. So it's such a tough thing to do because Roger and Rafa are, I think, the two best maybe of all time.”
In Cincy, Dinara Safina will take on Jelena Jankovic, who fought off four match points to best Elena Dementieva 7-6, 0-6, 7-6. after two hours and 46 minutes. Jankovic held three match points at 5-4 in the third, only for the Russian to break back. Dementieva held four match points at 6-2 in the tiebreak, but couldn’t hold on and lost six straight points to love the match, "I think you saw my reaction -- I was like 'Oh my God, I can't believe I won'," Jankovic said.

FRIDAY AUG. 14 - Looking like he was flat on his back down 1-5 in the third set, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga stunned Roger Federer 7-6 (5), 1-6, 7-6 (3) to reach the semis of Montreal.
After taking a spill in the first set breaker, Tsonga was sporadic form the backcourt and wasn’t serving with authority until 1-5, and then he went on a huge roll, winning five games in a row. He held three match points on Federer's serve at 5-6, before the Swiss held on, but he played a more impressive breaker and won the match when Federer double faulted.

"That's what Jo does. He doesn't make a return for three hours, and then he puts in a few and then all of a sudden he gets back into the match," said Federer. "I think I got off bad starts on all of my service games towards the end. So I had to scramble each time and have to start playing safe a little bit, and that's exactly kind of what he needed... This way, you know, he made me work for it and he did well to come back. In both tiebreaks I served horribly, and I guess that cost me the match in the end. All in all I thought it was a decent match. I didn't think it was bad, but it wasn't great, either. It's one of those matches I can live with.” Tsonga will face Briton Andy Murray, who eased into the semis with a 6-2 6-4 win over Nikolay Davydenko.

Andy Roddick and Juan Martin del Potro will meet for the second consecutive weekend. Roddick bested Novak Djokovic for the third time of the year at a major hard court event, also taking the strugging Serbian out at the Aussie Open and at Indian Wells.
On Friday, he defeated Djokovic 6-4, 7-6(4).
“I felt like I was making pretty good decisions. [I] returned real well, which is nice because I was putting pressure on the games that he was serving,” Roddick said.
Del Potro showed the soon-to-be No. 3 Rafael Nadal, that he has a long way to go before he regains his dominant first quarter of ’09 form when he took down the Spaniard 7-6(5), 6-1. "I was very happy with my first set," said Nadal. "It was my best level after the injury, and I was playing very good. It was a little bit normal after almost two months outside of competition. It was tough for me to play at this level. I needed more concentration than usual. The knees are very good, so that's very good."

In Cincinnati, No. 1 Dinara Safina out-slugged Kim Clijsters 6-2, 7-5 and will meet the unbending Flavia Pennetta, who beat Daniela Hantuchova 6-3, 6-3. In her comeback tournament, Clijsters led 4-1 in the second, but didn’t serve well enough to survive.
"She hits the ball extremely deep and down the middle of the court. It's a very good game plan she's developed in the last few years. She was a girl who could hit the ball really well and had a good serve, but wasn't the best mover out there and wasn't the fittest girl. To look at her now, you can tell she's in really good shape and that she's worked on a lot of things, and also mentally I think she's improved a lot…. I kind of feel like I want to go out there right now and do it all over again and try to figure out a few things.”
Clijsters will play in Toronto next week.
For her part, Safina secured the No. 1 ranking through at least the end of US Open. "I knew exactly what to expect from her because I took her like she was a top-10 player,” Safina said. “She's one of the best players. I think I stayed very aggressive today and didn't let her dictate too much."
Pennetta's win was her 15th in a row and guaranteed she would become the first Italian female to be ranked in the top-10. Last week after winning LA, she wasn’t sure she could pull off the feat.
Elena Dementieva got a nice piece of revenge over Caroline Wozniacki in a 6-2, 6-1 win. The Dane had beaten Dementieva twice this year. "I was trying to stay aggressive and not play backhand crosscourt all the time, trying to mix it up, and it really worked," said Dementieva, who will meet the next best woman not to have won a Slam, Jelena Jankovic, a straight set winner over Sybille Bammer.

THURSDAY, AUG. 13 - The comeback nino, Rafael Nadal, scored two wins in a 24-hour period in packed Montreal, one over David Ferrer when the former USO semifinalist retired in the first set and then on Thursday, a 6-3, 6-2 victory over rising German Philipp Petzschner. Nadal moved fairly well, kept his groundstrokes deep and played about as aggressively as he was expected to given that’s been off for the past two months.
Nadal will face a stiffer test in the quarters against Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro who advanced with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory over Victor Hanescu. The tournament has to be pleased with its final eight, as Novak Djokovic and Andy Roddick, who have a fine rivalry, will face off. Roddick had to battle extremely hard to inch past Fernando Verdasco 7-6 (2), 4-6. 7-6 (5). "He wouldn't go away," said Roddick. "To be honest I was probably at his mercy in most of those baseline rallies. I just stuck around."
Djokovic took a 6-3 6-4 triumph over Russian Mikhail Youzhny. Tennis.com reports that Djokovic plans to begin working with Todd Martin in a coaching capacity after Cincinnati. Djokovic will also continue to include full-time coach Marian Vadja.
Andy Murray raced through with a 6-1 6-3 win over Juan Carlos Ferrero and will play Nikolay Davydenko, who survived Fernando Gonzalez (Chile) 7-6(2), 7-5,
It was mother’s day in Cincinnati, when new mom Kim Clijsters reached the quarters of the Open with a hearty 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 win over Roland Garros champ Svetlana Kuznetsova, and not so new mother Sybille Bammer took out Serena Williams 7-5, 6-4.
Serena’s chances of grabbing the top spot from Dinara Safina before October now look slim, especially if the Russian survives Peng Shuai tonight. It’s a rare Thursday when both sisters lose. but the red hot Flavia Pennetta took down Venus Williams 7-6, 6-4.
Former No. 1 Clijsters, in her first tournament after a two-year break during which she had her daughter Jada, won the end-to-end two-hour encounter.
"I think she has good chances," Kuznetsova said of Clijsters US Open. " She won the U.S. Open once so I think she knows how to do it. She is the same as she was before. "he moves well. You can see she hasn't been all the time on the tour but she was playing great. I don't know if you remember when she was out with the wrist injury (in 2004), she won Indian Wells and Miami back-to-back." Clijsters might have to face top ranked Dinara Safina in the quarters.
Venus, who fell in the Stanford final to Marion Bartoli, continued her problems on US hard courts , making 38 unforced errors against the Italian, who has now beaten Venus four times in seven meetings.
“After a while it was obvious that she was just keeping the ball in play and waiting for me to self-destruct. I kept pressing that red button today and it didn't work out,” said Venus, who is scheduled to play Toronto next week. Pennetta plays Daniela Hantuchova, whose game is picking again. The Slovakian beat Vera Zvonareva 7-6, 0-6, 7-6 in two hours, 50 minutes.
Caroline Wozniacki advanced when Melinda Czink retired, and will face Elena Dementieva, who put down the streaking Sorana Cirstea 6-4, 6-4….The USTA and Cincinnati's Tennis for Charity announced the two organizations will finance a $10 million dollar upgrade to the Lindner Family Tennis Center. The project calls for the construction of a 52,000 square-feet West Building at the Lindner Family Tennis Center to add space for players, media and fans. Construction will begin in less than two weeks, immediately following the 2009 event, and the new building will be ready in time for the 2010 event.

Andy's, Clijsters Shine

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 12- After a sweaty and difficult loss to Juan Martin Del Potro in Washington, Andy Roddick scored an efficient 6-1 7-6 (3) win over Igor Andreev in Montreal. Roddick was joined by Juan Carlos Ferrero, who took down Gael Monfils 6-3, 7-6. The Spaniard will face Andy Murray, who knocked him out in the quarters of Wimbledon. “I’m here in the third round against Murray, it means I am playing well," Ferrero said. "I know it is going to be very tough but I'm playing the way that I want to play. I learned some things from the match at Wimbledon."

Del Porto advanced with a 6-2, 7-5 win over Jan Hernych, while Jo Tsonga had to work hard to best Rainer Schuettler 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Fernando Verdasco took a quick 6-1, 6-1 win over Leonardo Mayer. Philipp Petzschner, who had upended Sam Querrey in the first round, took out Tommy Robredo 7-6(3) 7-6(4). Another US hopeful fell when Mikhail Youzhny overcame a clearly tired John Isner 6-7(8) 6-1 6-3. With the smaller North American tournament swing done, now US fans will really see how American men, other than Roddick, fare against standout competition.
Anyone who didn’t think that Kim Clijsters had a clear shot at the top -5 when she launched her comeback never watched the strong legged Belgian closely enough and she showed in her win over Marion Bartoli and then in her 6-2 7-5 victory over Patty Schnyder in Cincinnati that she really hasn’t missed a beat. While the Belgian took a two-year break, she was always a tremendous athlete and never suffered a debilitating injury. The depth of the tour has improved since she left, but the talent level at the top has stayed largely the same, so expect her to begin seriously contending for Slam titles by the Aussie Open. But she’ll have stiff test against her buddy Svetlana Kuznetsova in the next round.

Jelena Jankovic also advanced with a 7-6, 6-3 victory over Maria Kirilenko and will play Victoria Azarenka, a 6-4, 6-2 winner over Anna Chakvetadze, who is playing a little better these days, but still is lacking in confidence. Hopefully, Azarenka’s mood has improved post her three-set defeat to Maria Sharapova in LA. After the loss, Azarenka stormed out of the stadium and into the parking lot, where she had to be dragged back inside to do press.

LA champ Flavia Pennetta extended her winning streak to 13 matches and will play Stanford finalist Venus Williams, who beat Agnes Szavay 6-2, 6-4. Vera Zvonareva took down Alisa Kleybanova 6-4, 1-6, 7-5, but Sybille Bammer overcame the slumping Agnieszka Radwanska 6-0, 7-5. Caroline Wozniacki took out Canada’s Aleksandra Wozniak 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, Elena Dementieva whacked Yanina Wickmayer 6-3, 6-4, and Sorana Cirstea continued her fine play by getting over on Anna-Lena Groenefeld 6-3, 6-2. India’s Sania Mirza hurt her right wrist again. More soon…

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