Photo: Reuters
oct 17 2008
Top seed and world No.1 Jelena Jankovic's 12-match winning streak was snapped in a surprising 5-7 6-3 6-3 loss to Italy's Flavia Pennetta in the second round of the Zurich Open today.
The Serb, who has recently added the Beijing, Stuttgart and Moscow titles to the one she claimed earlier this year in Rome, looked weary against an aggressive and persistent opponent.
Pennetta's deep groundstrokes and constant pressure paid dividends to produce her first win over Jankovic in six meetings.
Her win comes just a week after Jankovic won their Moscow quarter-final in straight sets.
"I was mentally and physically tired today, especially physically," said Jankovic.
"I'm not a machine. I've played a lot of matches, a lot of time changes, different finals, and I'm human.
"Today I couldn't really play my game. I didn't feel that great and Flavia took advantage of that. She played quite solid, so she was the better one today.
"I went on court and didn't know how my body would feel and went out there hoping for the best, but especially at the end today I didn't have any gas left in the tank."
The high-quality match, which lasted two hours 28 minutes, remained finely balanced throughout, with Pennetta looking increasingly sharper and fresher but Jankovic showing her usual resilience under pressure.
A winning backhand return down the line off a second serve gave Pennetta a break for 5-3 in the third, and she closed out the match in the next game in dramatic fashion, as her ace was called out but then over-ruled by the umpire as good.
"I was very tired but I just kept going with my serve. That was the important thing for me. And I tried to put pressure on her with my returns," Pennetta said.
"Last week I didn't have some luck but today I was more aggressive and just tried to make something different."
Serb second seed Ana Ivanovic, who had managed to win just five matches since lifting the French Open trophy in June, defeated Marion Bartoli of France 6-2 6-4.
Recovered from a thumb injury which kept her out of the Beijing Olympics, Ivanovic rallied powerfully and easily overcame any brief threats from her struggling opponent.
Agnieszka Radwanska's hopes of qualifying for next month's tournament in Doha were dealt a blow when the Polish fifth seed was beaten 2-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-3 by Slovenia's Katarina Srebotnik.
Radwanska led the second set 5-2 and came within two points of victory at 6-5 before the 2006 semi-finalist turned the match around.
Fourth seeded Russian Vera Zvonareva was forced to retire because of illness when she was down 6-3 3-0 against Spain's Anabel Medina Garrigues.
In other second round matches, Victoria Azarenka of Belarus crushed Romanian qualifier Monica Niculescu 6-0 6-0 and Czech qualifier Petra Kvitova followed her first round upset of Switzerland's Patty Schnyder by beating Sofia Arvidsson of Sweden 6-2 6-1.
AFP
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