Article by Pierre Cantin

Jelena gets through

In a highly entertaining match, Jelena Dokic passed to the secound round of the Betty Barclay Cup played in Hamburg, Germany with a victory over Russian Anastasia Myskina in three sets..

The match started out with both players breaking each other making it to 1-1.. Throughout all the match, there were many good rallies as we good expect because Anastasia Myskina is a very steady player for groundstrokes and although she does not generate that much power, she feeds off very well from her opponents and has no problems handling the power of shots from Jelena as well as moving from side to side of the court very efficiently.. but that also meant that the result of the match would very much be on Jelena's shoulders as Myskina would return most of her shots and not in a balloon type of play like many others but with angle and shots barely passing the net...

After both players won their seres up to 3-3, Jelena served and she won her service game at love getting some momentum by the same occasion but what made the set go to Jelena was that in the following game, Anastasia simply made a few silly mistakes while Jelena made a few winners and continued to return very well.. But in a sequence of 10 straight points, Jelena virtually took any chances from Myskina who had to let go and concentrate on the second set... a 6-3 win in 27 minutes...

Many would have beleived that from there it would be easy for Jelena but the second set was a whole other story as Jelena started making more errors while Myskina was playing steady but also putting more pressure on Jelena.. after Myskina took a 3-0 lead and a few line calls went against her, it looked like Jelena gave up on the set simply deciding to conetrate on the final set... Anyway, the 6-0 second set was 17 minutes long and mostly saw the crowd get worried a litte!

But when the third set started, it was back to business for Jelena who started the set in a very decisive way with a break of Myskina's serve... but Anastasia gave a message when she replied with a break of her own in the next game as Jelena was decontrated with a line call (the umpire had been unable to determine which mark the ball was thus being unable to overrule...) so it was 1-1...

But with a few extraordinary returns, Jelena rapidly regained the momentum and took a 4-1 break in only a few minutes leaving Myskina in the dust... The match finally ended with a 6-3, 0-6, 6-2 win for Jelena who will now face Conchita Martinez who is always very dangerous on clay although she is far from her best shape at the moment...

So that's all for now from Hamburg, more tomorrow:)

Pierre

P.S: They closed practice courts today so only thing I know is that Jelena practiced at least one time (with Schiavone)...:)