Kremlin Cup, Russia - Round 1

Alexandra Stevenson def. Jelena Dokic 6-3 and 6-1

"Fall seven times, stand up eight" - I found that japanese proverb in some newspaper and thought its the perfect beginning for that match report, because Jelena fell again. And this time she fell badly.

The match started with Stevenson to serve, and after she had hit two service winners and one ace for a 40-0 lead, she basically had won the match. This was the time Jelena looked helpless towards her coach for the first time and her eyes were saying "what shall I do?", and everybody could see that look, and of course Stevenson did notice that, too.

To be broken at her service after that dominating opening of the american was the logic following of Jelenas unability to answer a series of good balls of her opponent with even better balls of herself.

Jelena tried hard to get back into the game after being 3-0 down, finally hold for 1-3, even scored her first ace here, and then broke Stevenson in the seventh game after a hard fight and 4 deuces for 3-4 and serving. But the old story happened again: actually Jelena was back in the match, but as soon as the slightest thing goes wrong...... and the slightest thing this time was a double fault at 0-15 which destroyed her own game again.... she got broke for the second time today, could not recover from that and lost the first set 3-6.

Jelena served only 2 double faults in the first set, none of them at crucial points but got broken every time after it happened! It seemed like she couldn't get over her slightest mistakes, whilst Stevenson served 5 double faults and answered two of them with an ace straight away!

Set two turned out to be a complete desaster for the former number 4 of the world. She looked sad, depressed, clueless and she played like she looked. If she would have at least tried to het her best power-shots, and failed on them, it would have been less hurting to watch... but watching her trying to go for more or less save balls, and.... well..... it just was not her day....

Our favourite player lost some match to someone 3-6 and 1-6. So what? She is still our favourite player, and thats all thats matters! And next time she will win again ;-)