By Lisa Zimmerman

NEW YORK, NY, USA - It's official: by virtue of Jelena Jankovic reaching the semifinals, there will be a new world No.1 after the US Open. At the beginning of the fortnight there were six players in the hunt for the post-US Open No.1 ranking; during the first week Svetlana Kuznetsova was ruled out, and Jankovic's quarterfinal win on Tuesday night means Ana Ivanovic is also ruled out.

Ivanovic, who is spending her 11th and 12th weeks at No.1 during the US Open fortnight, will not add any more weeks to her tally just yet. Ivanovic's ranking points total can be passed by four players here - Jankovic and Serena Williams needed to reach the semis to achieve the feat, while Elena Dementieva and Dinara Safina needed to reach the final. If Dementieva and Safina are the finalists and Jankovic and Williams fall in the semifinals, Ivanovic could even be pushed down to No.5 next week. But for the moment, Jankovic reaching the semifinals means at least one of those four criteria is satisfied, and Ivanovic will dip to at least No.2 next Monday.

Williams, Dementieva and Safina all need to capture the title to become No.1. Williams and Dementieva would become No.1 outright with a title run, regardless of how the others do; Safina would take No.1 if she wins the title AND Jankovic isn't her opponent in the final (she needs her to fall to Dementieva in the semis).

Jankovic doesn't necessarily need to win the title to be the post-US Open No.1. If she wins the title, she will be No.1. If she is runner-up to either Safina, Flavia Pennetta or Venus Williams, she will be No.1. Even if she falls to Dementieva in the semifinals, she could become No.1 if Pennetta or Venus Williams beats her Russian conqueror in the final.

While Ivanovic, Jankovic and Williams have all spent time at No.1 before, it would be a first for both Dementieva and Safina, whose career-highs coming into this fortnight are No.4 and No.6, respectively. They would become just the second Russian ever to rise to No.1 in the world, following Maria Sharapova.

The sixth player who had a chance at becoming the new world No.1 after this tournament, Kuznetsova, was eliminated from the scenario after the first round, as she has 700 ranking points to defend from her run to the final last year and she needed some of the other players to lose early, given she had the most ground to make up. Her third round loss was not what put her out of contention.

NEW YORK — It's do as I say, not as I do when it comes to Marat Safin and his up-and-coming sister Dinara Safina.

Safin, the 2000 U.S. Open men's singles champion, is well known for his hard-hitting and his explosive temper. His boiling point was reached again Tuesday during his 3-6, 6-2, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 first-round win over Vince Spadea.

Serving to stay in the fourth set, Safin was called for a foot fault on the first point of the 4-5 game, and then was pushed to the brink again at deuce. While in his serving motion, Safin was again called for a foot fault - this time because his back foot crossed the centre line.

The little-known rule gave Spadea the game advantage and put him in position to clinch the fourth set on the next point.

"It's stupid rules that somebody made in, I don't know, 1850, and now they give me problems with these things," the still-perturbed Safin said. "It shouldn't be that way."

Safin grumbled at the linesman on the far end of the court and voiced his displeasure to chair umpire Carlos Bernardes. Speaking to him in Spanish, and in the universal language of frustration, Safin punctuated his remarks with expletives in English that were clearly heard.

He even sat on his chair mid-game in exasperation. After the set was lost, he went off court with tournament referee Brian Earley and took up the argument with him, to no avail.

Safin said, except for earlier this season in Cincinnati, he never had anyone call a foot fault against him on a second serve. He pleaded to be given a warning the first time he committed the fault before it would cost him a serve.

"I've already been on tour 10 years, and I want to enjoy my tennis," he said. "I don't want to fight anybody. I don't want to face any problems on the court. It's not like I'm starving to death and I need to do something original to earn money. I want to enjoy. It's so simple.

"I just want to have a nice match, win or lose, and whatever happens go home. That's it. I don't want to face the foot faults and all these things."

Earlier Tuesday, Safina - the No. 6 seed - moved into the second round by beating New Jersey's Kristie Ahn 6-3, 6-4.

She is learning a lot from her big brother, especially how to act on court. Well, sort of. In the past, meltdowns have caused Safin to lose focus and, in turn, matches.

"I would behave like a baby and crying and all this. He hated it," the 22-year-old Safina said. "He was always, 'Come on! You have to grow up in your mind. You cannot behave like this. ... That's why he's like learn from my experience. Don't do this."

Safina, a finalist this year at the French Open and the Beijing Olympics, is one of six women who could be ranked No. 1 on the women's tour by the end of this tournament.

"I think if she will do everything opposite of what I've been doing throughout the years, she will be Number One in the world for a long time," Safin said. "That's as simple as it is.

"Two tough finals ... and I think the third one is here. She should take her chance. ... I think she is ready to win the first Grand Slam. I'm really proud of the way she's handling the pressure and the way she's handling herself."

When Marat Safin destroyed Pete Sampras to win the U.S. Open title in 2000, it seemed the world order was about to change.

Sampras, who had just won his 13th Grand Slam title, was made to look old by the big, strong Russian, in one of the most impressive performances in recent Flushing Meadows history.

Since then, despite a stunning 2005 victory at the Australian Open, Safin has become one of the biggest enigmas in world sport, brilliant on his day but susceptible to mental let-downs and struck by injuries each time it seemed he was about to establish himself again.

Eight years on and a relative veteran at 28, Safin reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon this year and believes he is finally clear of the knee injury that hampered him after that 2005 win in Melbourne.

"The last time I played the U.S. Open normal was back in 2001, when I got to the semi-finals, probably, it was so long ago," former world number one Safin said.

"Every time I started to play well I was getting injured, even when I was number one, I got injured with the rib, I couldn't play for two months and my ranking dropped and I lost confidence.

"But I am getting back again, the results will come eventually. The ranking doesn't really matter, if you get the results it will come back."

Now ranked 44, Safin will be unseeded in New York next week but none of the top players will want to face him early on, especially Novak Djokovic, who was beaten by the Russian in round two at Wimbledon.

Having been ranked as low as 90th in March, Safin is on the up again.

Much of the credit, Safin said, should go to his coach, Hernan Gumy.

"It's been just over one year for us now, and I am pretty satisfied," Safin said.

"I am a little old to do certain things. Over the years it gets tougher and tougher to play well, especially when you compare yourself with the years before.

"He understands, he has a lot of patience and is the ideal person to travel with, which is very important. I am not under any pressure."

Safin said he had been wary about moving to his backhand side until Gumy took over.

"The knee was difficult and I was risking a little too much," he said. "That's why my ranking dropped because without confidence you cannot make any more winners from the back of the court.

"All of a sudden the pain was gone and I could start at least to work on the movement, I started to cover the court better, doing more work in the gym."

Nothing is smooth sailing where Safin is concerned, though.

After early defeats in the Masters Series events in Toronto and Cincinnati last month, Safin reached the quarter-finals in Los Angeles but then pulled out of Washington with a stiff neck last week.

"It should be okay. I just need three or four days' rest," he said.

Reuters

WASHINGTON, Aug. 12, 2008 (Reuters) — Marat Safin's U.S. Open preparations suffered a setback when the former world number one was forced to retire from his first round match at the ATP event in Washington with a neck injury on Tuesday.

The Russian sixth seed lost the first set against Italian Fabio Fognini 7-5 and then decided to withdraw from the match.

"I just blocked it and I pulled a muscle," Safin told reporters, adding that he suffered the injury on the second point of the match.

"It was getting worse and worse. I should have stopped earlier. I thought it might get a bit better, but it didn't."

Safin said he would now rest and then go to New York to prepare for the U.S. Open, which begins on Aug 25.

"I need at least four to five days to be able to turn it. I should be OK (for the U.S. Open)," he said. "I can't do much about it. It's a pity but I have to deal with it."

Despite the injury, Safin had surged into a 3-0 lead but after dropping his serve in the fifth game, the double grand slam winner requested an injury timeout.

With his flexibility restricted and his service speed well down, Safin was broken again in a protracted 11th game to give Fognini a 6-5 lead.

Perhaps we can stop using words like "promising" when it comes to players like Dinara Safina, enjoying now what you would call breakthrough seasons.

The nearly 6-foot, 155-pound Safina, like her up-and-down big brother, men's star Marat Safin, is a punisher of the ball, and has powered her way to a solid 40-13 record so far this year (after two rounds at the ongoing Olympic Games in Beijing), including three of her eight career titles and a current 12-match winning streak. She's rattled off 29 wins in her last 32 matches.

That's pretty hot.

Safina's first title of the year came in Berlin back in May, as she upended Elena Dementieva in an all-Russian clay-court finale. In her next event, Safina soared all the way into the final on the dirt at Roland Garros, only to lose to world No. 1 (at the time) Ana Ivanovic in her first-ever Grand Slam final. On her way to the title match, Safina saved match points in back-to- back matches on her way to upsetting reigning Aussie Open champ and fellow Russian Maria Sharapova in the fourth round and Dementieva in the quarters.

Following the French Open, Safina landed in another final, but was shocked by Thai veteran Tamarine Tanasugarn in the title bout on a grass court in The Netherlands. En route to the final, Safina toppled her compatriot Dementieva, once again, in the semis.

Safina was a disappointing third-round loser (against capable Israeli Shahar Peer) at Wimbledon, but she promptly rebounded in her next tournament by capturing a hardcourt title in Los Angeles, and followed that up by corralling more hardware the following week on a hardcourt in Montreal. All this winning activity in North America produced a U.S. Open Series victory for Safina, which means she will double her prize money in New York. If Safina can win the title in Flushing, she would receive a record $2.5 million payout.

And when it comes to that precious Russian supremacy, Safina is a perfect 6-0, combined, against her fellow Top-10 countrywomen Kuznetsova (No. 3), Sharapova (No. 5) and Dementieva (No. 7) this year.

Safina opened 2008 ranked 15th in the world in singles and has shot up to No. 6, and she's ranked ninth on the planet in doubles, where she's also tallied eight career titles, including a pair this season.

Aside from an Olympic gold medal this week, the skyrocketing Safina has her sights set on the upcoming U.S. Open, where she'll be among the favorites. The powerful Muscovite reached the quarterfinals in New York two years ago, and made it to the fourth round there last year.

When you get right down to it, Safina appears to be headed toward an eventual Grand Slam title, which is something her former world No. 1 and two-time major titlist brother would know about. Safin is a former U.S. (2000) and Aussie Open champ (2005).

Did You Know?: Safina was the doubles titlist (alongside Frenchwoman Nathalie Dechy) at last year's U.S. Open.

Source: The Sports Network
Scott Riley, Tennis Editor

by Matthew Cronin,Special to FoxSports.com
Updated: August 9, 2008, 8:46 PM EST

Nadia Petrova is ranked No. 18 in the world, but she won't be striking fuzzy tennis balls at the Beijing Olympics because her nation, Russia, is so rich in talent that she missed the cut.

Instead, the 26-year-old and former No.3 is heading to Cincinnati to compete against a small yet talented field that includes former No. 1 Amelie Mauresmo of France and former Wimbledon finalist Marion Bartoli.

Petrova, who competed in the 2004 Games in Athens and is a member of the Russian Fed Cup team, may not be competing in Beijing, but she has an opinion when it comes to picking who has the best shot to take home gold.

When asked to name five players with the best chance to win gold in Beijing, Petrova selected one Russian in her top 5 — Dinara Safina, the French Open finalist who just won back-to-back titles in L.A. and Montreal. The rest of her list included two Serbians — No. 1 Jelena Jankovic and No. 2 Ana Ivanovic — and Americans Venus and Serena Williams.

SAFINA: "Dinara looks so dominant — her facial expression has changed, her mental approach is different and she looks more grown up," said Petrova, whose mother Nadejda Ilina won the bronze medal at the Montreal Olympics in the 400m relay. "Reaching the French final really helped her confidence. Before she was just going to tournaments and trying to get as far as she could. Now, from what I've heard from her, she has the desire to become to No. 1 and has really set a goal for herself."

IVANOVIC: Petrova is not as enamored with the French Open champion Ivanovic's game and says it is going to be very difficult for the Serbian to impose herself as she's been unable to practice much due to a bad thumb injury.

The 20-year-old has been spectacular at times this year, but has also fallen into mini-slumps, unable to follow up her Parisian success with early exits at Wimbledon and Montreal. Petrova doesn't like Ivanovic's lack of a Plan B.

"She has big strokes, but I don't see much variety in her game," Petrova said. "Whenever something goes off, she's not able to control to the ball."

JANKOVIC: Petrova is a bit more impressed by Jankovic, who just became the first player in Sony Ericsson WTA Tour history to reach No. 1 without playing in a Grand Slam final. But she says that Jankovic's success is based more on her personal happiness than it is on pure ball striking.

"Jelena is very consistent and whenever she's playing she's going for every shot," said Petrova, who lost to Jankovic in L.A. "She's very focused from the baseline and she picks the right moments to go for her shots. As long as she's having fun, she's dangerous, but when she's kind of getting bored then it doesn't work anymore."

WILLIAMS SISTERS: Petrova readily acknowledges how dangerous the Williams sisters can be when healthy, but that's an open question in Beijing as both are coming off knee injuries.

Venus won the gold medal in singles in 2000, and she and Serena won the gold in doubles. But without having played a match on tour since winning her fifth Wimbledon title, Venus will have to round herself into form quickly. The seven-time Grand Slam champion has done so before, but given that she hasn't won a significant crown outside of Wimbledon since 2004 (Charleston on clay), her prospects are very much in doubt. In fact, Venus, a two-time U.S. Open champion, hasn't won a significant hard court tournament since Antwerp in 2003.

Serena is certainly gunning for Olympic gold and U.S. Open glory and told FOXSports.com a few weeks ago that her year won't be satisfactory without one of those titles. But she re-injured her chronically bad knee at Stanford and like her sister is very shaky when she has to play through pain.

THE REST OF THE FIELD: Somewhat surprisingly, Petrova didn't tab another one of her countrywomen, world No. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova, as a player to watch. "She hasn't had great results recently, nothing outstanding," Petrova said. "For her it's a matter of will, but she can be dangerous if she has her mind on something."

Here's a few other medal hopefuls in stacked draw: No.5 and 2000 silver medalist Elena Dementieva, who plays the Ukraine's Kateryna Bondarenko in the opening round; No. 8 seed and teenager Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, who faces Chan Yung-Jan; rising Belarusian Victoria Azarenka, who has shown terrific form as of late; and two other teens, Slovak Dominika Cibulkova — who reached the Montreal final — as well as Dane Caroline Wozniacki, who just won a tournament in Sweden on hard courts.

How Safina rose from under-achiever to potential world No.1

Since her victory in Los Angeles last week, Safina has been on a roll, proving that she is the player of the hour on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour. Not only did she win the Rogers Cup but she is also assured of victory in the US Open series, which will see her double her prize money at the US Open, up to an additional $1 million. If she should win the U.S. Open, she will get an extra $1 million in prize money, and she will win bonus money for each round she wins. That means that if she wins the Flushing Meadows event, she'll pocket $2.5 million. Bonus money also goes to the second and third-place U.S. Open Series winners.

Tennis’ next generation emerges from shadows of today’s Olympians at East West Bank Classic
by Paul Teetor
Published July 31, 2008/ Easy Rider

The big winner at the East West Bank Classic at the Home Depot Center in Carson last week was next week’s Beijing Olympics.

The official winner, however, was 22-year-old, late bloomer Dinara Safina, who blitzed what was left of a once-formidable field and walked away with the championship trophy Sunday afternoon. After fighting off a match point early in the week with a powerful ace, the newly swift and sleek Russian 6-footer rolled over everyone else in her path, including top-seeded Jelena Jankovic, whom she crushed in Saturday night’s marquee semifinal. As in past years, the tournament also showcased several future potential top women players.

Meanwhile, the big losers were the fans who bought advance tickets expecting to see mega-stars such as Venus and Serena Williams, Lindsay Davenport and Svetlana Kuznetsova -- all of them last-minute dropouts due to various knee injuries they hoped to heal up in time for the Olympics.

Defending champion Ana Ivanovic of Serbia and Manhattan Beach’s own Maria Sharapova -- technically she’s still Russian, but lives here when not touring -- also chose to sit out and train for the Olympics. But at least they hadn’t committed to playing -- which allows the tournament to use their names and images in its advertising -- and then withdrawn at the last moment.

A week on hard courts under the searing summer was not going to help anyone’s knee or shoulder problems, so in a sense the mass exodus from Carson was understandable. The Summer Olympics only come around every four years, an Olympic medal is always a great thing to have on your resume, and there’s a women’s tournament with $600,000 in prize money -- give or take a hundred grand -- almost every week of the year somewhere in the world.

Then there are those old-school virtues of pride and patriotism.

But still the superstars’ last-second disappearing act was tough to take for fans, press and tournament officials who ultimately couldn’t escape the long shadow of the much-hyped, much-anticipated Chinese Olympics.

Even Safina had the Olympics on her mind moments after smacking a mach-speed backhand past a tired, limping and virtually unknown Flavia Pannetta in Sunday afternoon’s finals at the Home Depot Center.

“I still have to go to Beijing after all this,” Safina said after the 6-4, 6-2 win that took 70 minutes. “If I stay healthy and strong, and keep playing like this, God only knows what can happen at the Olympics.”

Little sister grows up
Safina has always been an imposing physical presence with a build and physique similar to that of her better known big brother, Marat Safin, a two-time Grand Slam winner.

Safin, however, is also the most notorious head case on the men’s tour, a racket-smashing, multi-lingual shouter and X-rated screamer who once pulled down his shorts and mooned a hostile crowd. And he’s a notorious under-achiever, with a ranking nowhere near his talent level.

His equally talented little sister is also known for smashing rackets and losing control of her game, mostly by trying crazy shots at bad times. But at least she has never shed her clothes on the court.

And the under-achiever label has stuck to her as well. The athleticism, the overwhelming size, the big serve and the technically perfect strokes -- her mother is a big-time tennis coach in Russia -- were always there as she made her way onto the tour over the last six years and slowly pushed her ranking into the mid-teens.
But she stalled out last year when her weaknesses in movement and her erratic temperament were exposed. She usually found a way at crucial moments to lose to the top players and became known as a head case, a dangerous but inconsistent Big Babe banger just as likely to beat herself as her opponent.

In the last six months, however, she hired a new coach, added a fitness guru, dropped 10 pounds and rededicated herself to achieving her full potential.

Their solutions: better diet, better quickness and better emotional control.

“My coach told me the only way I could get better was to tone down the emotional part of my game,” she said. “When he said it is the only way I could get off the level I was stuck at, I decided to do it. And it’s working.

Indeed, the East West title capped off an incredible streak in which Safina won a Tier 1 event in Berlin, reached the final of the French Open, and won 22 of 24 matches before adding 5 more impressive wins this week.

Besides her straight set win over Jankovic in the semis, she survived the most riveting match of the entire week, a 7-6, 0-6, 7-6 win over 20-year old Russian Alla Kudryavtseva in Thursday night’s marquee match.

That was followed Friday afternoon by a 6-3, 6-2 steamrolling of 8th seed Victoria Azarenka, a 19-year-old up-and-comer on the tour. Azarenka, who looks like a slightly shorter version of Sharapova and whose constant grunting sounds EXACTLY like Sharapova‘s well-known shrieking, never had a chance.

Safina later said it was one of the best matches she had ever played.

“It was perfect,” she said, seemingly amazed at what she now realizes is capable of. “I can’t think of anything that went wrong today.”

Top girls
Safina’s Saturday night demolition of Jankovic -- and the collateral damage to the Serbian’s Number One dream -- was the artistic highlight of the tournament. It provided fans at least a taste of the high-level, high-velocity, high-emotion tennis that is usually generated when two of the Top Girls square off.

In the last six months Safina has morphed into one of the Top Girls -- this victory will elevate her to eighth in the world -- while Jankovic became a Top Girl not long after breaking through right here at Carson two years ago.

That’s when Jankovic rebounded from a nightmarish streak of 10 straight first-round losses that had her musing aloud about quitting the tour and going back to college. But she kept fighting, rode her daring, down-the-line backhand all the way to the semifinals and began her climb from the depths of the computer rankings.

Two years later, even without winning a single Grand Slam event, she started the week as number two in the world and the protagonist of the only legitimate storyline the tournament had left: Could JJ -- as her growing legion of fans have taken to calling her -- win the tournament and gain enough computer points become number one in the world?

“I think our fans are very excited about the prospect of seeing Jelana become number one right here in Carson,” Michael Roth, vice-president of communications for the Anschutz Entertainment Group, said Tuesday night, two hours after Serena Williams finally, officially, pulled out. “It’s not often you have the opportunity to see something historic like that.”

And Jankovic, who had a love affair with the crowd all week, was clearly eager to win the title and grab the number one ranking from her countrywoman and not-so-great friend Ivanovic.

“I don’t care if it’s only for one week that I am number one,” she said. “I go in the history books as number one in the world and they can never take that away from me.”

She too planned to play in the Olympics and she too had knee problems that forced her to wear a long, conspicuous thigh bandage down to her kneecap. But she vowed to play through the pain and seemed happy to let Ivanovic do the heavy lifting at the Olympics.

Saturday night showdown
Once the rash of withdrawals had been digested and third-seeded Anna Chakvetadze checked out in a second round loss to Sybil Bammer, it became clear that either the top-seeded Jankovic or the fourth seeded Safina was going to win the tournament. Unfortunately, they were in the same half of the draw and thus scheduled to meet in the semi-finals, not the finals.

The imbalance in the two halves of the draw became crystal-clear when Saturday dawned to find the first semifinal featuring 21st ranked Flavia Pennetta against 54th ranked Bethanie Mattek, who is known more for her outrageous outfits than her boring baseline game. Their early-afternoon war of attrition was played under a broiling sun that turned the stadium court into a frying pan and the brave spectators into slices of crispy bacon. Three hours later, with both players fighting to make it into their first Tier 2 final, Pannetta’s superior strokes and graceful movement finally overcame Mattek’s funky game and bulldog determination to pull out a third-set marathon.

Saturday night was reserved for the Jankovic-Safina semifinal, but almost everyone in the stadium knew it might as well be the final. The winner was a lock to take the title over the 26-year-old Pannetta, who had severe blister problems on her feet and has been on the tour long enough to prove she simply isn’t in the same class as either Jankovic or Safina.

The tension was high as both women took the court with Jankovic sporting the red dress that the crowd preferred over her white one in an informal poll she took after her second round win over Long Beach’s own Vania King, 7-5, 6-2.

To see how tough life is on the pro tour, consider the plight of the 5-foot-5, 19-year-old King: as twilight fell in the stadium Wednesday night, she was playing so well that she held a set point while leading Jankovic 6-5, 40-30. After a long, tough rally -- King also has great wheels, like Jankovic -- King smacked a backhand down the line that Jankovic barely got her racket on. She somehow scraped up a towering lob that was loudly called out as it landed at the intersection of the baseline and the sideline. But before King could get to her chair to celebrate her first set victory, Jankovic challenged the call. The replay showed the ball caught the slightest sliver of the sideline and thus was considered in. The point was replayed, Jankovic won the point and eventually forced a tie-breaker at 6-6. A chagrined King was never the same and quickly fell apart.

Why not Dinara?
Jankovic continued her determined march to number one Friday night with a straight set win over 9th seeded Nadia Petrova, another big strong Russian known as a head case who falls apart at key times. Right on cue, this time she was broken late in each set and went away without a struggle.

The strengths of Jankovic’s game have been clear ever since she emerged at Carson two years ago. Her suffocating court coverage is the best on the tour, her favorite and most effective shot is her two-handed down-the-line backhand, and her once weak serve was a liability but it has gained some pop this past year.

Now both women, good friends off the court, were on a Saturday night mission: Safina to keep the best streak of her career going, and Jankovic to grab that elusive number one ranking, something she had tried and failed to do twice this year in earlier tournaments that could have given her the top spot.

The showdown featured Jankovic’s all court-game, as she glided effortlessly around the court for impossible gets, versus Safina’s pure power package, a barrage of two-fisted backhands and heavy-duty serves. But it was the new elements in Safina’s game - the improved movement and agility, the elimination of her what-the-hell-was-she-thinking errors - that ruled the night and demonstrated why she is suddenly a serious contender for number one in the world.

At a strange, transitional moment in the women’s game when Justine Henin suddenly and inexplicably retired at the age of 26 while still ranked number one, and the Williams sisters are only playing when they feel like it, and Sharapova is reaching for greatness, but unable to claim the top spot as her own, suddenly the possibility is there: why not Safina as number one?

Tie breaker
The semi-final match began ominously for Jankovic. Safina broke her at love with a bullet-proof backhand that flew right past her. But Jankovic broke right back, and they dug in for a fierce battle all the way to the tie-breaker, which played out as a microcosm of the match.

On the first point Jankovic unleashed a wheel-of-fire forehand winner that caught Safina wrong-footed, then she followed that up with a down-the-line backhand service return winner to go up 2-0 in the breaker.

But Safina, as she had done all week, never blinked and just kept pounding the ball to the corners and charging forward at the slightest opening She started on the road back with a service winner that handcuffed Jankovic and cut the lead to 2-1.

Suddenly Jankovic showed serious signs of nerves with a double fault and a badly mis-hit forehand that gave Safina a 3-2 lead. Grateful for the unexpected gifts, Safina pounded a service winner to build her lead to 4-2 as they changed sides.

Jankovic, suddenly favoring her right knee, dumped a forehand right into the net for an unforced error that left her trailing 5-2. She held on stay alive at 6-3, which set up the best point of the match, a fire-fight of bludgeoned backhands and flying forehands. Finally Jankovic went for broke on one of her trademark inside-out forehands, but it went way wide and Safina had the breaker and the first set.

Suddenly Jancovic’s hint of a limp turned into a full-fledged leg crisis, and she proved that you have no chance against Safina if you cannot run after hitting your shot.

“My legs just seized up,” Jancovic said. “The whole week just caught up to me. It was the first time all week I was feeling pain, and then it just started getting worse and worse.”

Soon it was over 7-6 (3), 6-1, and 18 hours later Safina was picking up the winner’s trophy.

Breakout girls
Over the years the East West Bank Classic, as it is now known, has been famous for giving fans an early look at great players-to-be. In 2003, the first year it was held at the Home Depot Center after moving from the its original home at the Manhattan Beach Country Club, Sharapova made her professional debut as a 16-year-old and made it all the way to the fourth round, where she took a set off eventual champ Kim Clijsters before bowing out.

Two years ago, both Jankovic and Ivanovic had break-out tournaments that launched them into the top five. As many players have noted over the years, there is very little room at the top and moving from the top 10 to the top five is as difficult as moving from the top 100 into the top 10.

Tennis fans this year got to see at least two stars of the future at the Home Depot Center, both potential top tenners and one of them a potential top five player. And once you make it into the top five, you have a real shot at number one.

Alla Kudryavtseva is the 20-year-old Russian who had a match point on Safina at 5-4 in the third set of their third-round match. But Safina pounded an ace and shook her fist while she screamed in triumph. Soon she was into a tie-breaker, where she narrowly prevailed, 7-5.

Kudryavtseva, a brainy sort of 5-foot-10 blonde who thinks her way through matches, has a big forehand and a fierce competitive will that enabled her to upset Sharapova at Wimbledon, a victory which vaulted her ranking from number 154 into the top hundred.

But the potential Grand Slam champion is a 19-year-old, 5-foot-3 package of tennis talent and nervous energy named Dominica Cibulkova, from Slovakia. With thick, powerful legs shaped like fire hydrants, she bounces around the court like an Olympic gymnast on steroids, a whirl-wind of movement, energy and passion as she leaps from side to side, from the baseline to the net and back.

On the tour barely two years, she has risen like a rocket and is already ranked 31st in the world.

Maybe someday soon -- say in two years, like Jankovic -- she could be playing for the East West title and competing for number one in the world.

“Anything is possible,” Safina said about the race to number one. “All you can do is train hard and play hard. If you do that, the results will take care of themselves.”

Reporter Paul Teetor may be reached at paulteetor@verizon.net. ER

Boos for self-destructive Safin

Marat Safin, whose run to the Wimbledon semi-finals raised hopes that the sport's most charismatic and talented underachiever might at last be making another surge, instead became embroiled in another controversial failure yesterday in the first round of the Masters Series.

The former world No1 from Russia, now No38, swore at an official who foot-faulted him, argued lengthily with the umpire, hurled his racket and was booed repeatedly by the crowd before walking to the net and shaking hands with Dmitry Tursunov even though his opponent's serve on the last point had been called a fault.

Safin will probably deny that he threw the match, insisting that in fact the line call was wrong, but it is impossible to be sure because he refused to come for interview after his 7-6, 6-4 defeat, thereby risking a fine from the ATP.

Many of his opinions were nevertheless audible to spectators. "Is that the best decision you can make? I served three double faults because of that," he screamed at the line judge who suddenly foot-faulted him at 4-4 in the second set. Injuries have hampered him cruelly, but so have self-destructive drives, and at the age of 28 time is short.

Tursunov, his partner in the Davis Cup-winning Russian team of 2006, made a plausible case in defending him. "I can really sympathise with some of the angry stuff towards the end because it's really not the best time to call a foot fault," he said. "If he's making that many he should have been told that throughout the match."

Britain's Andy Murray, meanwhile, got his wish to have as long as possible in which to recover from the familiar inflammation sustained in Toronto last week and caused by the congenital split patella in his right leg. He begins today against Sam Querrey, a 6ft 6in, dangerously steep-serving, top-50 American.

Source: The Guardian

Safina is no one's weak sister now
By Jim Thomas, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 07/23/2008 11:06:32 PM PDT

Dinara Safina is no longer best known as former No. 1 men's player Marat Safin's precocious little sister. And she's no longer just another in a long line of promising young Russian tennis players.
Not after winning the German Open in May and then reaching the French Open final in June.

No, at the tender age of 22, the powerful 5-foot-11, 155-pound Safina is establishing her own identity. She needs no association, either brotherly or nationally, to earn recognition on the WTA, where she stands on her own as an emotional and aggressive force whose best tennis is ahead of her.

"The French was very big (for my confidence)," Safina said Wednesday after disposing of China's Shuai Peng, 6-2, 6-3, in the second round of the East West Bank Classic at Home Depot Center in Carson.
"I always feel I can do better, and then finally in Germany and at the French the results are big. It just proved to me what I can do when I play well."

Safina's best results came on Europe's clay, but she clearly is comfortable on the hardcourts that are the staple of the U.S. summer circuit.

In her first match after Wimbledon, she was relatively sharp and used her strong groundstrokes to overpower Peng whenever she needed to. She also displayed the athleticism that serves her well on clay and the feisty competitiveness that makes her future so exciting.

"She's not an easy opener after my vacation," said Safina, who is fourth-seeded in Carson and ninth-ranked in the world. "I think I played a pretty solid match, so I'm pretty happy.

"I have my best success on clay, but I like the hardcourts. You have to be a little more aggressive, take the ball a little sooner. I enjoy that."

Starting with this week's stay in Carson, where the road to a semifinal match against top seed Jelena Jankovic appears wide open, this promises to be an eventful summer for the still-improving Safina. She's 29-13 in 2008 and holds victories over the likes of Lindsay Davenport, Serena Williams, Elena Dementieva, Maria Sharapova and Svetlana Kuznetsova going into her first-ever Olympic appearance next month in Beijing.

Although she's a fighter on the court, she refuses to admit she carries lofty goals into the rest of the summer, including the U.S. Open.

"I just want to be healthy," she said, "then let's see how far I can get. I do take it one match at a time. There is no easy opener. You must be ready."

She is, course, excited about the Beijing Games.

"It is my first time, so I hope to do well," she said. "I'm not sure yet if I will go to the opening ceremonies because we play two days later, but if everyone says `let's go, let's go,' then of course I will go."

And if she doesn't follow up her French Open breakthrough with more semifinal or final appearances or a gold medal this summer? She will not be crushed.

"What can you do," she said, smiling.

Her breakthrough season has led to at least one change in her attitude, though. Next year, Safina will play with her brother in a mixed doubles event at the 2009 Hopman Cup.

"Dinara didn't feel really worthy at the time to play with her brother," tournament director Paul McNamee said recently. "She holds him in such high regard.

"But for the first time she feels as if she's worthy to play with her brother and why not? She reached the final of a major this year and is in the top 10 singles players in the world now."

Safina smiled when asked how exciting it was to play alongside her more famous brother, who at 28 is trying to regain his once-dominating form.

"Of course it is exciting," she said. "I hope we don't fight. Always he is not happy with my game."

That can't be true anymore. After all, it is Safina who is the current top-10 player in the family.

Posted 07/18/2008 @ 12 :20 PM Peter Bodo Tennis World

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently had a chance to catch up with Gil Reyes, the man who trained Andre Agassi during the remarkable resurgence that transformed him from a "mere" multiple Grand Slam title winner into a beloved icon of tennis. All you need to know about the indebtedness and loyalty Andre feels toward Gil is that Andre named his first born "Jaden Gil."

I called Gil because he's back on the pro tour radar, as part of the Adidas Player Development program, the innovative system whereby shoe and apparel manufacturer Adidas provides athletes under contract to the brand with high-quality support on everything from nutrition to tennis strategy. The most noteworthy athlete to exploit this free support structure is Ana Ivanovic. Grand Slam champions usually hire the best coaches and advisers money can buy. Ana, by contrast, got hers free.

Sven Groeneveld, the most renowned coach (as well as a founding mastermind) of the Adidas program is Ivanovic's only coach - even though Sven is duty-bound to refrain from advising Ivanovic on what she needs to do before confrontations with other Adidas players. So, for two year running in the French Open final, Sven was not only excluded from drawing up the game plan on the evening before the match, during the final he was absent from his usual post, the player guest box. That's because on each occasion, Ivanovic was playing another Adidas athlete (Justine Henin in 2007, Dinara Safina this year).

Anyway, Gil joined the Adidas team recently, and his impact was made known almost immediately. He worked with Sam Querrey, preparing the young American's legs for the European clay-court season. Until this year, Querrey had exactly one win on clay in an ATP event. After working with Gil for two weeks in Las Vegas, Querrey went to Monte Carlo and beat Carlos Moya, Andreas Seppi and Richard Gasquet before he lost to Novak Djokovic. " 'How did this happen?'," Sam asked me, Gil recalled. "I said it was easy - you just asked your body to do something new and it responded. It underlined my basic belief that an aware athlete is always learning to ask more of his body. Training is seen by some as monotonous, and I'd say anybody who feels that way isn't doing the right kind of training."

Here's a funny thing about Gil. Andre's fans love him for who he is - his personality. This has tended to obscure the amount of work Agassi put into his career, particularly in the later stages. In some ways, many of Agassi's fans didn't even want to hear that he left his all on the practice court and in the gym, day after day, because they preferred to cling to their perception of Agassi as a spontaneous, mercurial, sometimes wayward talent, never entirely at ease with his identity as a pro tennis player.

The facts suggest otherwise, and if you don't believe me, you can ask Gil. He's worked with Agassi for nearly two decades, leaving his post as the highly successful strength coach of the NCAA Division I University of Las Vegas, Nevada, basketball squad (Gil was their strength coach when the Runnin' Rebels won the 1990 NCAA championships).

You want to know what Andre and Gil did, work-out wise, on December 11th, 2002? Call Gil. How about March 5, 1994? Call Gil. Pick a day, any day, from the time they began working together Andre retired, and Gil can look up exactly what they did that day at the facility informally called the Agassi Training Center. Every workout they ever went through is written down and saved in a binder.

That's a tribute to the extreme degree of professionalism both men brought to the partnership, and it's too bad if that runs counter to the way we wish to remember Andre. The bottom line is that Agassi worked like a dog, although a well-treated, much-loved one. Here's my theory, for what it's worth: In Gil Reyes, Andre - a young man often at odds with, and in rebellion against, his father, Mike - found the father figure that a part of him longed to hold. It takes just a few minutes of conversation with Gil to realize that he's an extraordinarily sensitive man, in spite of the fact that he's built like a brick you-know-what and could probably take any two Ultimate Fighting idols and snap them in half. Trust me - that's not a slight of the cage warriors.

Gil understood Agassi perfectly, right from the get-go. As he says, "In his heart, Andre was always a seeker. He was in search of his best, and I happened to be the one who helped him realize that in his identity as a tennis player."

Today, Agassi's Grand Slam trophies and his Olympic Games gold medal are on display not on the armoire in the living room he shares with his wife, Steffi Graf. They're on a shelf at the Agassi Training Center. It was the place Andre and Gil designed and built when they grew tired of working out in the garage at Gil's home. Gil designed all the equipment (the machines) and had them fabricated with an overarching philosophy in mind: Strength training is a separate, unique endeavor, not an add-on or afterthought intended simply to make a player "stronger" in what might be called the dictionary sense of the word. Gil had two goals in mind for Andre, and anyone else who works with him: First, to get stronger. Second, to accomplish that safely, with minimum stress or potential for damage through over-exertion or fatigue.

"We really pride ourselves on the fact that we're safe," Gil told me. "Young tennis athletes are not weight lifters, and shouldn't be expected to do some of the things lifters do. One of our priorities is to ensure that when we work on a particular muscle or group, we don't risk collateral damage to other groups. If a player just spent two hours serving, his serving shoulder is fatigued. He shouldn't just go into the gym and start pushing iron. Actually, I've always believed that going straight from the court to the weight room is not a good thing."

Gil takes a great deal of pride in the fact that Agassi won the Australian Open four times, at a time of year when everyone, at least in theory, was prepared for the Grand Slam grind. "Andre was so ready in Melbourne that he actually requested day matches, so that he could play in that intense heat. The officials always cringed when he asked for that, because the (television) ratings wars are played out at night."

Everyone talks about how much the game has changed in recent years, and Gil endorses the idea. "Today's players aren't chasing shots, they're running after lasers. It's become a game of rapid, violent accelerations and equally violent stops and changes of direction. You see how many hip injuries there are today? That's probably the reason. Players are needing to slam on the brakes like never before, which is why there's an premium today on learning to use your thighs as shock absorbers for every C.O.D"

That's Gil-speak, for change of direction.

The operational phrase for every responsible trainer, according to Gil, is "wear and tear." He believes that young players are committed, but wonders if they're sufficiently schooled in the nuances of off-court training. "The persistent sociology in tennis has been that there's no real strength and conditioning regimen in place. It commonly comes down for many of these young players to have a dad in charge. I have nothing against the role of parents in tennis, but you just can't expect an parent to be on top of these things. That's the sociology of our industry, for better or worse."

Gil believes that Rafael Nadal is the new proto-type for developing players - after all, the talent of Roger Federer is self-evident and it doesn't take long for a youngster or his mentors to recognize that the bar he sets is virtually unattainable. But Nadal - that's a different story. To many, Nadal 's success owes as much to hard work and strength as it does to talent. While this certainly sells Nadal short, legions of juniors are thinking: If I can just get as big and powerful as Nadal, I've got a shot. . .

This puts a new premium on strength training, and we have yet to see where that will lead. "There are many, many coaches who know what they're doing," Gil says. "I have to believe they'll respond to this new sensibility out there."

The Agassi Training Center is not a public space; it's a private gym where Gil trains whomever he chooses. It strikes me that a stint at the ATC might benefit Federer; you all saw how he rubbed his serving shoulder late in that Wimbledon final, and how the sting seemed to depart from his backhand under persistent bombardment from Nadal's heavy topspin shots - particularly off the forehand wing. But Federer (and Nadal) are Nike athletes, and Gil has thrown his lot in with Adidas. You know who that leaves: three players who could benefit enormously from some time with Gil: Novak Djokovic, Marat Safin, and Marcos Baghdatis. I'll be curious to see if any of them makes the effort.

It's hard to describe how uplifting it was to talk with Gil. The man just radiates good intentions, which explains why he is so often called Yoda-like. I've always bought into that; how could you not, when Gil says things like: "My best teaching is done with my ears open, my eyes open, and my mouth closed. I had a special thing with Andre. He was a teaching me what I needed to learn, and that ultimately led both of us to reap enormous rewards. I don't know if that can every be duplicated."

Two things you can take from the smooth-hitting Slovak.

1. Keep it simple. I often see club players try to imitate the wristy ground strokes that many top players use. That’s fine for the pros because they have the time to continually perfect and groove their swings, but it’s not a good idea if you don’t play a lot. Why? The more elements you have in a stroke, the more difficult it will be to produce when the pressure is on. One of the key fundamentals of tennis is creating a solid technical foundation so that when the match gets tight, your strokes don’t fall apart. Daniela Hantuchova, whose ground strokes are some of the cleanest in the game, obviously did a great job of that in her formative years. Hantuchova hits the ball much like Lindsay Davenport, using long, fluid, uncomplicated strokes. Her forehand and backhand have gradual low-to-high sweeps to them, not extreme low-to-high movements, giving her topspin for safety but enabling her to drive through the ball. In fact, her technique is so sound that it’s easy for her to hit penetrating shots even when she’s under pressure.

To get a feel for hitting clean, deep drives, try this in practice. Using a moderately low-to-high stroke, hit the ball 3 feet past the baseline while not allowing it to clear the net by more than 2 or 3 feet. It’s difficult to do because you really have to hit through the ball. If your mechanics are correct, your follow-through won’t be much above shoulder height. Also, make sure you get in good position; if you don’t set up so you can make contact between your knees and rib cage—which Hantuchova does beautifully—you won’t have much success with this drill.

2. Round out your game. Whether she’s blasting forehands and back-hands or hitting volleys, Hantuchova is comfortable in all parts of the court. I think a big reason for this is that she has played so much doubles. (In case you didn’t know, Hantuchova owns a career Grand Slam in mixed doubles.) Balancing your singles game with a regular dose of two-on-two will teach you different ways to win points. When Hantuchova competes in singles, she frequently finishes points with volleys because her ground strokes create opportunities for her to approach the net. This is a skill that doubles has helped her refine. Another thing that doubles has done for Hantuchova’s game—and it should do the same for yours—is force her to have an aggressive mentality on her returns. When returning in doubles, you have to pick a target and go for it in order to avoid the person at net. This has taught Hantuchova to be offensive from the first hit. In today’s game, even at the club level, if you can instill fear in your opponent that you will attack weak second serves, it will pay big dividends. It may not win you the point right away, but it will become a factor later on in the match when the pressure is on.

Article by Paul Annacone - Tennis.com

Some beautiful photos of Daniela (by Julian Hargreaves) in the article of Federico Ferrero "Vacanze" More on her official site.

Countdown to Beijing 2008 24 Days > Hantuchova’s game for a medal

From: Malay Mail

SLOVAK tennis star Daneile Hantuchova is looking forward to a memorable outing at the Beijing Olympics next month by winning a medal. SLOVAK tennis star Daneile Hantuchova is looking forward to a memorable outing at the Beijing Olympics next month by winning a medal.

She will be competing in both the singles and doubles with Jannette Husarova.

Some tennis players have debated the Olympics' worth, as it falls in the middle of the Tour season and ahead of the US Open this year.

But Hantuchova said while some see the Beijing Games as a deterrent to playing well in Flushing Meadows, she sees it as another highranked hard court tournament to help fine-tune her game.

“Beijing will be the highlight of my year, so all the schedule around it will be so good that I will be as fresh as I can for the Olympics,” she said. “Nothing changes around the Grand Slams. Those are still the biggest events in tennis, and I will probably approach the Olympics as a fifth one, in terms of preparation. “Right after the Beijing Games is the US Open, which I don’t think is a big problem. “Hopefully, I will be in good form playing a lot of matches.

“The rest of the season won’t change for me either.” Another good reason why Hantuchova is so adamant about playing in the Olympics is that she wouldn’t be a tennis player if not for the world’s biggest multi-sports event.

“Definitely this is the reason why I started playing tennis,” Hantuchova said. “When I was five years old, the first time I saw tennis on TV was when I saw my countryman (Czechoslovakian) Miloslav Mecir win the 1988 Olympics. “For me that was the No 1 reason why I started playing tennis.

“So, it means so much to me, and I just can’t wait to be out there.” Hantuchova said she would play in the doubles at the Beijing Games if the opportunity presented itself. The last Games i n Athens was a short stay for Hantuchova as she was ousted in the second round, but that didn’t stop her from experiencing the Olympics in the time she had.

“My first time around, I was going all over the places there,” she said.

“I was following my fellow athletes to all venues and I had a very good time. “It was crazy but I think this time I am going to concentrate on my sport. This time I’ll try and go for the medal.” The only sport she said in terms of wanting to go and see was short-distance swimming.

Hantuchova, after a Grand Slam lull in her career from the 2003 Roland Garros through to the 2005 US Open, has recorded six fourth-round appearances since 2006, including her semi-final appearance in the Australian Open in Melbourne last January. After her quarter-final win at the Australian Open, Hantuchova revealed that she used to play the piano after practices and matches to soothe her nerves.

“It was a great way to relax, especially after a tough practice, tough day at school. “I was always so tired and sometimes falling asleep there.

“I used to play all the classics — Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.

“That kind of stuff,” the Slovak added.

Brian Viner Interviews: She seemed to have it all - a graceful game, a formidable intellect and the looks. But rumours in 2003 that she had an eating disorder almost ruined the Slovak star's career
From: The Independent
Friday, 15 June 2007

Daniela Hantuchova is a couple of months older than her good friend Kim Clijsters, and watched with decidedly mixed feelings as the popular Belgian hung up her racket, seemingly for good, as a competitive tennis player.

"I feel we've grown up together, Kim and me," Hantuchova tells me, "so it's very, very strange. On the one side, I can totally understand where she's coming from. As a top tennis player you sometimes want nothing more than a normal life. On the other side, with the talent she has, she has done so many great things but could do much more. It's a personal choice and I haven't yet talked to her about it, but my manager is always telling me about the danger of doing too much too soon. The advice I get is to stay patient. Sometimes it's better to go the longer way round, and then you appreciate everything much more, because maybe you're more ready for it."

Five years ago, although still a teenager, Hantuchova seemed more than ready. In the 2002 Pacific Life Open at Indian Wells in California, generally considered the most important women's tournament away from the Grand Slam events, the Slovakian beat Martina Hingis in the final having dispatched Justine Henin along the way. She beat Henin again in that year's US Open, where, as she had earlier that summer at Wimbledon, she reached the quarter-finals. Tennis duly heralded another star from the east, and the tabloids heralded another looker. Hantuchova was strikingly pretty and stood 5ft 11ins in her bare feet. She spoke four languages and was eloquent in all of them. She was also, we were told, a classically trained pianist ("yeah, Beethoven, Bach, all that stuff," she confirms to me). The assets of Anna Kournikova, a more established object of tabloid fervour also from the former Eastern Bloc, seemed limited by comparison.

Moreover, Hantuchova played tennis with grace and artistry, words that appeared to have been all but crushed by the blitzkrieg that was Venus and Serena Williams. By early 2003 the youngster from Bratislava was ranked fifth in the world, behind the Williams sisters and the two Belgians, Henin and Clijsters. Plainly, a first Grand Slam victory beckoned.

Then, Hantuchova's world caved in. In the second round at Wimbledon that year she played Shinobu Asagoe of Japan and surprised nobody, Asagoe doubtless included, by romping through the first set 6-0. Yet Asagoe won the next set 6-4 and the epic final set 12-10, and Hantuchova left the court in tears. It was the start of a precipitous decline that was accompanied by startling weight loss, prompting widespread rumours that she was suffering from an eating disorder. She plummeted out of the world's top 50 and seemed destined never to achieve her early promise, until this year when she again won at Indian Wells, lifting her second Sony-Ericsson WTA Tour singles title, this time at the expense of Svetlana Kuznetsova. She has put weight on, has recovered her considerable poise on the court, and now stands on the brink of re-entry into the world's top 10.

It is quite a sporting story, and to learn more about it I have travelled to meet her in Berlin, where she is playing in the German Open. After numerous meetings postponed because of rain-affected matches that keep getting stopped and restarted, we finally get together in the capacious lobby of the Inter-Continental Hotel, where every male head, and not a few female ones, follows her progress across the marble floor to where I am waiting for her on a vast sofa. The brisk handshake and my tape-recorder, not to mention 20 years, thoroughly blow any pretence that I am there for anything other than professional reasons, but I confess that I quite enjoy the fleeting burst of reflected limelight. We middle-aged men must get our kicks however we can.

I ask her, after a few opening pleasantries, whether she found it hard to deal with the rumours that she was bulimic or anorexic. "Yeah, it wasn't nice. Especially because it is absolutely 100 per cent not true. It is the biggest... I don't know how to say it in a nice way." Then say it in a not nice way. "OK. It's the biggest bullshit. Yes, I did change shape, because there was too much pressure on me and I was not ready to handle it all. Now I hope that I can be some kind of inspiration for young kids, by showing them that you can turn things around. Everyone matures at a different age."

Compounding the expectations heaped on her as a tennis player was the trauma of her parents splitting up. Theirs had always been a close family (she has one brother, five years older) and she was devastated when her parents' marriage foundered, with suggestions in the Slovakian press that her father, a university professor, had become involved with one of his students. This is a subject Hantuchova declines to discuss, reasonably enough. But she doesn't mind dwelling on the publicity surrounding her dramatic loss of weight.

"I think," she says, "that there is way too much emphasis on the way we look in sport in general. With the guys nobody bothers, except to say that Ronaldo has got a little bit heavy or something. But with the women, there is too much. Everyone has a different shape. People should focus only on the game."

Hantuchova, I should add at this point, is sitting with me in the lobby of the Inter-Continental wearing a jauntily angled beret. She adores fashion, is sometimes seen at fashion shows, and has ambitions to design her own range of women's clothing. So is she not trying to have her cake and eat it, if that's an appropriate metaphor, by wearing eye-catching outfits designed to make the most of her long hair and long legs, yet willing the media to concentrate only on her tennis? A smile. "But why shouldn't I wear nice things? I know what you mean and I guess I can't have it both ways. But it's not just me. Jennifer [Capriati] worked so hard in the gym yet there was still so much pressure on her, saying she was heavy. Serena [Williams] gets it too. It's really not fair."

Hantuchova's beguiling eloquence in what is her third language (behind Slovak and German; her fourth language is Italian) makes me wonder whether tennis' gain is linguistics' or diplomacy's or perhaps the international fashion industry's loss? At any rate, she seems to have a wisdom well beyond her 24 years, and an intellect that is rare in sporting circles. Does she ever reflect on the notion that tennis might just be a rather frivolous way of earning a living? She nods. "Yes, I do. My father is a professor [of computing], my mother studied pharmacy and worked at the Ministry of Health, my brother is an architect. Everyone in my family has a university degree except me. I know that tennis is not stretching me. I say to my parents, 'look what you guys have achieved'. What do I do? I hit a yellow ball."

And yet, by hitting that yellow ball well enough to win the odd Grand Slam, she could potentially earn more in her short career than her mother, father and brother combined?

"Yes, but I don't think about money. And anyway I don't think the rewards in tennis are too big. Basically, you have to give up everything else in your life. You talk about winning Grand Slams. That's not a job from 8am to 4pm, that means you have to be committed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"People don't see everything we do. They see we go to beautiful places, but we're in a different hotel room every week, for maybe 10 months of the year. OK, the hotels are nice ones like this, but it's not home. I get homesick a lot. But I also know that it's a big privilege to do something in life you love, and I do love tennis."

The extent of that passion comes across when she talks almost lyrically about the purity of her practice sessions with her latest doubles partner, Martina Hingis. "It is a feeling I only get with her, an unbelievable feeling. In Miami we practised with wooden rackets, because someone wanted us to try them, and the ball came off the racket so perfectly." For a second I think she might cry. "That's why I was so pleased to see Martina coming back. Tennis is not all about power, it's also about rhythm, and she proves that more than anyone. I'd always wanted to play with her but then she retired. Once she came back we said for sure we will play together, although I was committed to Sugi [Ai Sugiyama]. We waited until the time was right, and it has been so much fun."

As for the woman Hingis was named after, Martina Navratilova, she too has been an occasional doubles partner, and a source of great inspiration, as well as anxiety.

"I played a singles match against her in Eastbourne a couple of years ago, which I won, but I have never, ever been so nervous in my life. I normally don't really care who's on the other side of the court, but with her that was all I could think about."

Because Navratilova was from the former Czechoslovakia, like her, and a girlhood role model? "No, because she was already in the States when I grew up. Miroslav Mecir was my big tennis hero. He won the gold medal at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, which was the first time I had ever seen tennis on television and it had a big effect on me. I was only five but I said 'I want to do this'. He was my inspiration.

"But Martina has been a big help to me. She has given me lots of advice, for example how to use my weapons on court. She knows that I think a lot on court, maybe too much, and she tells me that tennis is not as complicated as I sometimes think. I make the mistake of seeing tennis as a chess game, with so many different options.

"Sometimes if I have time and a big shot to hit, I think too much about whether to go for a short angle, a hard shot down the line, or whatever, you know. I just need to be a little smarter. Play the right shots at the right time."

If she can begin to do that at Wimbledon in a little over a week's time then she might progress further than the quarter-final, which is still the limit of her success in Grand Slams. Wimbledon is the title she craves more than any other.

"Oh yeah, that's the one, for sure. I've been in the final at Eastbourne, grass is definitely my favourite surface. And I love the history at Wimbledon. For any tennis player to be part of that is amazing. The first time I went there, I just can't describe it. To see all the people lined up outside, I got goose bumps."

She will, of course, be just one of the dozens of -ovas and -evas competing at the All-England Club. I ask her how she explains the extraordinary proliferation of female tennis players from the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe?

"It's the mentality," she says. "We are prepared to work very hard to get there, no matter what it takes. We're not spoiled. In the West, it's sometimes hard to stay motivated if you are given everything when you are young. And the worst thing is when parents push their kids too hard. In our part of the world the desire comes from us. No one needs to push us. In fact my parents were the other way." For the first time in the interview, she giggles like a 24-year-old. "They'd say 'that's enough tennis, now let's go and study'."

From The Sunday Times
July 13, 2008


What has been your best moment in tennis and what was your biggest disappointment?
The most satisfying win was beating Justine Henin in the 2002 US Open. I had lost to her twice and like the rest of the girls on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour I held her in such respect so to get the better of her in the third-set tiebreak was a great boost. As for the biggest disappointment, I can’t pick one out because I try to view every defeat as an experience from which to learn.

Who has been your toughest opponent?
That would be myself. Most tennis players would say the same because we play an individual sport and so much of the time it is a battle against your own self-belief.

If you could have one wish to change yourself for just 24 hours, what would it be?
Initially I would have to answer just to be able to play tennis like Roger Federer. But thinking more about the question, I’ve always had dreams about being invisible and have a fascination of seeing how people act when they think nobody else is around.

Apart from tennis, do you have other strings to your bow?
I can speak several languages - my native Slovak, English, German, Italian and Spanish. I also spent a lot of time learning to play classical piano. Everyone in my family has a degree except me: my dad is a professor of computing, my mum a pharmacist and my brother an architect. I have a university place in Slovakia if I want to get back to studying.

Who is your best friend on the women’s tour?
The Japanese player Ai Sugiyama, who was my doubles partner for a long time. We won doubles titles in Doha and Rome as well as Birmingham in England. She’s very down to earth and is an incredibly sweet person off the court, but on the court she fights like a tiger.

When you were younger, who was the player you most enjoyed watching?
Miloslav Mecir, the greatest ever Slovak player, who reached the finals of the US and Australian Opens, losing to Ivan Lendl both times (Mecir also reached the semi-finals at Wimbledon and the French Open). He played with such style and went by the nickname of the Big Cat although the French called him Le Prestidigitateur or The Conjuror. When I was a girl growing up in Bratislava, the sight of him winning the Olympic gold at Seoul in 1988 was the inspiration for me starting to play tennis.

What is your favourite food?
I am a big seafood fan. If I had to choose a particular cuisine it would be a tough choice between sushi and Italian. However, most of all I love everything that my mum cooks. I’m also a lover of chocolate and for dessert I’ll go for crepes smothered in Nutella.

If there was one thing you could change in tennis, what would it be?
I speak for the majority of players when I say fewer tournaments and less publicity activities. I know the tour are very aware of the problem and there is going to be a reduction in the schedule in forthcoming years, but the amount of weeks we are required to play at the moment makes it inevitable that players miss big events because of injury.

Have you ever resented the fact that some people know you more for your looks rather than your tennis?
There is way too much emphasis placed on the way we look rather than actually just concentrating on our tennis, but I guess that is the way of the world right now.

What is your favourite Grand Slam event?
All the four majors are specific and special in different ways. The atmosphere in Australia is relaxed, Paris is such a chic place and there is an electricity in New York. However, Wimbledon is always going to be the most special of the Grand Slam tournaments because of its tradition and history. It’s a special feeling to be part of it, although maybe the tournament came a little bit too soon for me this year after being out injured.

If you were allowed to travel to any city or place in the world for enjoyment rather than playing a tournament, where would you choose to go?
Let’s put it this way. Cape Town followed by Cape Town and then Cape Town . . . but I cannot complain about living in Monte Carlo. Rome is also a beautiful city and I was very disappointed to miss the tournament there this year because I was suffering with an injured heel.

Watching DVDs in the hotel room is a favourite relaxation of most tennis players. If you had to choose one, what would it be?
No questions about this one. I’m a huge Russell Crowe fan and Gladiator is my all-time favourite movie.