Article by Gerhard Grundhammer

RITA GRANDE PREVIEW

27 year old Rita Grande from Torino, Italy is Jelenas opponent, today at 10am local time in Los Angeles (1pm New York, 6pm London, 7pm Belgrade).

The worlds no 36 seems to be a solid right-handed tennis player, who is in the top 100 for 7 straight years now (highest position was 24), and with a good sense of humor - she named her cat "Boris" after Boris Becker, because of their similar "hair-colour".

Rita has won 2 WTA-titles in her career. Both in 2001, Hobart and Bratislava. Especially at Hobart she played the tennis of her life, eliminating Smashnova and Frazier before beating Jennifer Hopkins in the final, though she lost the first set 0-6!

At Grand Slam tournaments she is not that successful. She never reached a quarterfinal of any Slam, but has a few good results. One of those was earlier this year at the Australian Open, where she lost to Jennifer Capriati in round 4 3-6 and 6-7(9!). What a match that must have been. The match lasted more than 1 1/2 hours, and the two girls played 172 points! The Italian no2 hit 22 winners and 33 unforced errors. She had 4 aces and only 2 double faults, but her second double fault was at 9-10 in the second set tie-breaker and decided the match. Quite funny, that both players were so exhausted at that tie-break that they forgot to change sites after 9-9! Rita had 50 (fifty) net approaches at that match, and 27 of them were successfull! And thats why it seems rather strange to me, what Capriati said after the match:

Capriati: "It`s tough to play her. She does not give the ball much pace and it was a test of my patience. I even got in a slicing battle with her at times". - well, though Jelena and Jennifer have got a similar game, I guess that wont happen today! about that incident not changing the sites she said: "I didn`t even know the score - I was just trying to suck air."

By trying to find more recent good results of the Naples born girl I had less success, as finding that match above. Maybe the Quarterfinal of Hobart is worth mentioning, though she lost there to a qualifier, i never heard of, or the 3rd round at Roland Garros, where she lost to V.Williams in straight sets. So it could happen, that Los Angeles becomes her highlight in 2002. She has alredy beaten Alicia Molik 6-4 and 6-2, 9th seed M.Maleeva 4-6, 6-0 and 6-3 and "Clijsters eliminator" K.Srebotnik 6-2 and 6-1. Even if she looses today, which is rather likely, she played an excellent tournament, considering that she lost 9 tournaments this year in round 1!

Jelena leads the 1.77 meters (5`10") tall girl 3-1 but they havent played eachother for 2 years now. Their first meeting was in 1999 at Birmingham, and Rita Grande won 2-6, 6-3 and 9-7!!! In 2000 they faced eachother three times and Jelena won all three of those matches at Amelia Island, Shanghai and at the Olympic Games.