Thursday in Paris
by Pierre Cantin

Well as I left Montreal 3 weeks ago, I only had a vague hope to be able to see Jelena in Paris. Not only wasn't I sure to go, but then there were the days, getting the tickets, being in Paris, etc.. Everything seemed so complicated!

But leaving this morning at 7AM from a friend's house 2 hours ago just felt great. Why ? Because being indoor, I was 100% sure I was going to see Jelena play, and hopefully reach the quarterfinals! Sometime life is just full of things that you could barely call luck. Passing through the metro in Paris on my way to the tournament, I ran into a friend of mine from Montreal, can you just think of the odds of that acutally happening ? Of course, we talked a few minutes, she told me all about her trip and everything and I then headed to the stadium realising I had just missed 30 minutes of practice but no big deal.. that is until I arrived on centre court at 11:35AM and saw Jelena there practicing! She was almost finished and I had missed the whole thing! Dammit! Anyway, for those interested, Jelena was practicing with Elena Dementieva and her mom was on the court with her..

So anyway, I then walked around, watched a few matches mostly waiting for the match of the day, Jelena who would face Christina Torrens-Valero. A lot of you know that I have seen many tennis tournaments over the past few years but I had never seen Torrens-Valero play and didn't know quite what to expect.. With two matches over on centre court in a fairly short period of time, the crowd wanted a long match out of Jelena's 2nd round but that hope did not last for very long.

Jelena jumped on the court dressed in a red, white and blue dress and looking very concentrated and confident as usual. It was business time only.. So when after 10 minutes, it was still 3-3 without any breaks, Jelena started to get impatient.. Torrens-Valero, like we could have expected when seeing she came from Spain, is a clay court player. But the thing is, in the start of the match, she was succeeding in feeding off of Jelena's power which made a few interesting rallies but was far from Jelena's game plan. But a few minutes later, while leading 4-3, Jelena succeded in putting some pressure on Torrens-Valero getting the score to 0-40 with a few good returns, a few seconds later, Jelena had served out the first set 6-3 in 19 minutes. I could already hear some people around me mumbling about Jelena being too quick, bla bla bla. Those of you who have seen Jelena play live have probably seen it before, Jelena is probably the player with the quickest pace right now in the wta. Give her the serve and after each point, she will race back to the line waiting for her opponent to be ready and then serve.. It certainly is annoying at some occasions for her opponents and I think it was one of the factors that was important today as Jelena was simply ahead of Torrens-Valero who never really entered the match.. and you wonder what fast pace is ? Well figure this, in 19 minutes, Jelena had won her first set 6-3. The next match, Henin vs Dechy was still stuck at 1-1 when the 19 minute mark passed!!!!

So anyway, the second set started and Jelena left no doubts about her intentions to finish the match early when she broke Torrens-Valero to start the set.. After that, there really was nothing to worry about as Jelena raced to a 6-3, 6-2 win in 42 minutes by ending the match with a successful serve and volley!

So overall it was a very good match for Jelena who certainly was the most dominant player to take the court on Wednesday:) Let's hope things go well against Dementieva:)