Jelena moves to semis

By Pierre Cantin
Date: 19/10/2001

Jelena had a bit of a letdown today in her match after winning the first set but luckily recovered in time to go on to a straight set win.

Jelena started off the match playing fairly good tennis and serving better than her last match as was Farina-Elia. In fact, until 4-4, there was no indication of who was in control but that changed when Jelena was able to break Farina's serve to end the first set in 31 minutes and she was now up to serve to start the second set...

No one could have guessed what then happened. After being broken in that first game, she saw Farina-Elia take a 2-0 lead which honestly was not much source of concern. A few minutes later, Jelena had won her serve and had a break point to level the match. But instead of converting she let that chance slide away and was broken right after giving Farina-Elia a 4-1 and a serious option on the match. But Jelena was able to get more shots into play while still giving Farina-Elia more power than she could handle!

So they reached the tie-break that Jelena was able to pull off reaching the semifinals and getting one more win away from the #9 rank as well as a spot in her 5th final of the year!

Next up for Jelena will be French player Nathalie Tauziat who has a very similar style of play to Chanda Rubin that Jelena faced earlier but is more consistent and also probably a better player at the net. Still, Jelena should be able to pull this match off...

Jelena faced Tauziat earlier this year and lost one of those very weird matches, a 6-0, 0-6, 6-2 loss that happened in L.A in August...But let's hope