Jelena struggled a bit in her second round match against Petra Mandula yesterday before prevailing 6-3 3-6 6-3. A win is a win and it streaks her win/loss record to 6-1 in her last two tournaments, including this one! Next up is the second seed, Ai Sugiyama. Now normally in a tier2 event such as this one, you would expect the second seed to be a top10 player and this is not the case at Linz. Sugiyama is currently ranked 11^th in the world and she has had some great results this year beating the likes of players such as Clijsters, Davenport, Maleeva and even Jelena over the past year. These are certainly fantastic results for a player such as Sugiyama but as of late, she has failed to pass the second round in her past two tournaments. This is advantageous for Jelena considering she, on the other hand, played amazingly well last week in Zurich and will be high on confidence, especially after beating the world number one for the second time in her career: a feat not many players can accomplish in their careers!

Paths to the Quarterfinals:

Dokic

1^st Round: Dokic d. (5) Hantuchova 6-4 6-1. This match-up was highly anticipated once the draw for Linz was released because both players have been in a slump, more so Daniela out of the two by far! And with a 3-0 head-to-head record going into the match, many people thought that Hantuchova would have the upper edge. However, Jelena proved them wrong with a strong performance winning in straight sets and proved that last week was no fluke. She also defeated the 5^th seed in the 1^st round in consecutive tournaments.

2^nd Round: Dokic d. Mandula 6-3 3-6 6-3: The last time these two played, Mandula pulled off a huge upset at the 2001 French Open where Jelena had a great draw but unfortunately couldn’t capitalize. Nevertheless, Jelena came back from a 1-3 score in the first set to win 6-3. She then took a 3-1 lead in the second set but in a surprise role reversal, Mandula then won the next six games, breaking Jelena early in the 3^rd set. At 3-3, Dokic got the vital break and won with a love service game. So overall, a good match for Jelena!

Sugiyama

1^st Round: (2) Sugiyama vs. Bye

2^nd Round: (2) Sugiyama d. Pisnik 6-3 7-5: A pretty good result for Ai considering Pisnik had defeated last year’s finalist, Alexandra Stevenson, in straight sets in the first round.

Sugiyama’s Style of Play:

As most people would no, Ai is a really consistent player who hits her groundstrokes pretty well. Her height, however, does tend to disadvantage her serve although she can get great angles out wide on either side of the court which can be quite effective. Her lack of power though, will be an advantage for Dokic when they play tomorrow. Sugiyama is also an experienced doubles player and has won numerous doubles titles throughout her career and is a regular doubles player with Kim Clijsters this year as well. Subsequently, she is a great volleyer and can set herself up well to move into the net. This is what Jelena should be wary of.

Head-to-Head Record:

Dokic has played Sugiyama two times in her professional career and the results are as follows:

As is evident, the first time they played, Dokic played an awesome match to even win a 6-0 set. In their second encounter, however, Sugiyama only just beat Jelena in three tough sets. This is quite interesting mainly because it was at this stage of the year when Jelena had played only a few tournaments and was in a small slump. So the question is, if Sugiyama can only beat Dokic by this scoreline when Jelena was not playing that well, then will Dokic, with a newfound confidence level with the help of her great coach Borna, destroy the number 2 seed and move into the semifinals? The answer is, if Jelena can serve as well as she did against Clijsters and move Ai around the court as much as possible with her ground strokes, then she has a great chance of causing the upset of the tournament and move into the semifinals for the second week in a row! The interesting this is that there is only 3 places in difference between both players where Sugiyama is seeded 2^nd and Jelena not seeded at all because the seeds are announced on the previous week’s ranking.

 

Good Luck Jelena!