Another tough loss

By Pierre Cantin
Date: 28/10/2001

Although the score was better today, Jelena was still very far from causing an upset in Linz against the most dominant player at the moment in the WTA.

Sure, Jelena was only broken once in the first set, a 6-4 finish....and being broken in the first game is usually sign of nerves mini-breakdown more than anything. But then you look at the stats and you see that Jelena won only 6 points on Davenport's serve in the whole first set. There simply is no way that Jelena can win a match without putting more pressure on Davenport's serve because she will not feel any pressure while Jelena senses she needs to win her service every single time.

In the second set, things got worse as Jelena lost her serve 3 times to give the set 6-1 to Davenport, certainly a disapointing result.. So was this a great week ? Yes, it was, Jelena played great tennis. Unfortunatly, right now, she has reached a point in her career where people will expect finals..and she probably does herself. The next step is beating players like Davenport even when they are playing awesome tennis like she was today...

So let's hope Jelena can improve for next week in Munich as she could face Davenport for a third time in less than 3 weeks (possible matchup in the second round)...

Overall, still big congratulations to Jelena for an awesome week, it is easy to see how much she has improved in 2001...