Article by Pierre Cantin

Jelena arrives in Hamburg

Well once again strange weather today in Hamburg as it was sometimes sunny and hot but then a few minutes later would bring rain and cold times... For those who have been into tournaments, the second day of qualifying can often be not the best day to see as there are not many matches and when players you wanted to win in first round of qualifying don't make it, you are doomed to hope for good practices... and luckily, around 11:30 while I was just walking around I heard from a certain distance Jelena's sound as she was whipping a few winners so I approached the practice court and there it was, what I was hoping for.. Jelena was there with her mother and a guy, her hitting partner, she was simply hitting shots for about one hour, nothing fancy, not moving really just putting a lot of pace on her balls and hitting hard.. Things were going well and when she headed back to center court, I was only worried about not seeing her run more to test her legs.. But only two hours later, Jelena appeared back on the court this time with world #3, Martina Hingis and both mothers with them.. it turned out to be one of the most fun practices I have enjoyed seeing in my life.. They started out slowly with middle court shots and then went to cross-court shots (Jelena missed a few shots on her backhand there) and then played forehand increasing speed as the rain was pouring on them.. but rain went away so they continued going to net, another pleasure to see Hingis at the net with her great net game against the powrful Jelena.. Then, they made some serves and Jelen was simply blasting returns, even Hingis could only congratulate Jelena telling her that all balls were flying back!

After having some more practice, they started playing some points against each other and there we saw some very high quality shots from both players who were giving an effort but also having great fun, smiling a lot and congratulating themselves, a true pleasure to see!

Thingfs look good for a great week in Hamburg as Jelena will now face Anastasia Myskina who did nomake a presence today as she was playing Fed Cup this weekend so we could expect a possible Tuesday match for them...