The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Ivanovic stunned

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 04, 2008
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Ivanovic stunned

S.V. Sriram

Hong Kong: Three out of four seeds winning their matches isn’t bad. Anybody would take it. Unless of course you happened to be the fourth. Tournament top-seed Ana Ivanovic of Serbia must surely have felt the same as she was beaten by Elena Dementieva 6-4, 1-6, 6-3 in their late night encounter at the JB Group Classic tennis championship at the Victoria Park here on Thursday.

The first three seeds hardly broke into sweat as they swept past their opponents in just around a hour each.

Tough fight

Ivanovic had to wait for an hour and one minute to make a match out of it when she won the second set to level the set scores.

But that was all she could manage as Dementieva, a former champion here, overcame a case of the jitters — she sqaundered three match points in the eighth game of the third set — to cross the hurdle in an hour and 44 minutes.

Ivanovic for her part did not give in easily. Down a set, the Serbian beauty gave a stunning display of why 2007 is considered to be her breakthrough on the Tour as she took the second set 6-1.

Speaking to a section of the Indian media here earlier, Dementieva had said she has to be a good mover on the courts just to compensate for her weak serve. She proved it here, retrieving everything that Ivanovic threw at her.

The match was a refreshing change from the first three matches where players chose to slug it out from the baseline.

There were the sliced backhands, the delicate drop shots, the backhand down the line winners — Ivanovic on numerous occasions wrong footing Dementieva to pull it off — and also the many forays to the net.

Not much seperated the two, expect the unforced errors. Dementieva’s 15 were 10 less than Ivanovic.

Earlier, the script played out according to plan when tournament fourth seed and World No. 5 Venus Williams got past local favourite Peng Shuai 6-1, 6-2 in 67 minutes.

Meanwhile, Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova withdrew from the doubles action due to illness.

Her place in the doubles will be taken by Shuai.

The results: Venus Williams bt Peng Shuai 6-1, 6-2; Elena Dementieva bt Ana Ivanovic 6-4, 1-6, 6-3.

Doubles: Venus Williams and Caroline Wozniacki bt Peng Shuai & Anna Chakvetadze 8-4.

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