Jelena Dokic and her doubles partner Nadia Petrova
successfully started in doubles in Miami.
Today, their opponents were Alexandra Stevenson, a young
tennis player from USA, the one that can cause problems to
Jelena in singles when Jelena is not 100% with her shots,
and young up-and-coming Greek's tennis sensation Eleni
Daniilidou.
Playing against these two is always interesting to see and
watch, as they are not playing for a longer period together,
so you never know what to expect from them, but if you check
their doubles history, the story will tell itself.
Alexandra Stevenson won only one doubles title, and that
triumph cam last year, where she was teamed up with Serena
William in Leipzig, while Eleni Daniilidou's last success
was with whom else then with Jelena Dokic in Bahia last year
where they where defeated in the semifinal match.
But according to what Jelena and Nadia brought on court
today, there was nothing that Alexandra and Eleni could do.
There were stages of the match where too much unforced
errors were just too much to at least hang in, to try to
make the match more interesting. Not that Alexandra and
Eleni didn't try, because they did, but even in those
moments of desperate change of tactic, Jelena and Nadia
would usually replay with bonus.
That
is something that was well seen during so many break points
that Jelena and Nadia have had, and they just didn't want to
slow down, to let their opponents to come back in the match,
or should we say on the score board. Pure masterpiece,
that's what was it all about.
Dokic really dominated the center of the court with her
leaping forehand and her backhand crosscourt, while Nadia
pretty good covered the net. They played pretty confident
and relaxed.
Alexandra and Eleni knew that Dokic and Petrova are very
dangerous when they play with their own rhythm, so they
tried to go along with it. But they just couldn't
concentrate on their own game and couldn't play their own
shots. Nor executed well.
They were thoroughly frustrated with their play against
Dokic and Petrova, and more because they were short with
their groundstrokes, yet sometimes too long off the line.
In a match for the ages, Jelena Dokic and Nadia Petrova
stormed with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Alexandra Stevenson and
Eleni Daniilidou.
