Article by Pierre Cantin

Not pretty but it works..

 With an amazing quality of matches today in Hamburg and rain outside, I was in my centre court seat all day and was not disappointed with Hingis and Venus Williams putting on good shows while the match between Clijsters and Schett was of lesser quality.. Anyway, after the match there was a fashion show on centre court because the main sponsor, Betty Barclay is a clothes maker, so it was great to see and espacially when Daniela Hantuchova showed up with two guys and did her tour of the platform, it was great! And you know what, even though it was only minutes before Jelena's match, she was on the side with Kim watching the show, having great fun! So anyway, a few minutes later, Jelena was on the court with Justine Henin on the other side of the court!

The match started with both players breaking each other.. in fact, 5 of the first 7 games were breaks of serve..And good thing, Jelena was the one holding her serve! As she ran to a 5.1 lead, things looked really great and there was reason to see why she could lose the first set but for some reason, things completly turned around and Jelena lost 5 straight games to almost lose the first set but luckily she recovered in time and forced a tiebreak that she eventually won 7-3..

And when they got back on the court for the second set, suddenly both players were now unable to break each other! They went up to 4-4 and after that exchanged a few breaks and when Jelena blew a chance to win the match at 5-4, it was just just a setback for a few minute for all the fans who had a chance to see another tiebreak..this one left no doubt as Jelena rapidly took a 6-1 lead and finally ended the match 7-6 (3), 7-6 (3)!

Not the best of matches for both players, espacilly serving as they combined for 17 double-faults in the match while acing 5 or 6 times.. Anyway, Jelena is through but will need to play better tomorrow when she faces Kim Clijsters who is playing great tennis right now and will not be an easy opponent for sure, should be a good one!

So see you tomorrow!:)

Pierre