Eastbourne 2009: Chakvetadze vs Jankovic

And so both Serbian “sisters” go out in the first round. But while there was nothing particularly shocking about Ivanovic’s loss – since it came to Petrova, last year’s finalist and possessor of the kind of power serve you expect to be successful on grass – Jankovic’s loss is pretty shocking. Although Chakvetadze is a former top-five player (in 2007, her best year, she reached the US Open semifinal and won several titles) she has barely won a match all year and her ranking is down to 31. Jankovic finished last year number one, and has dropped to 6 after an overtraining left her muscle-bound in the first part of the year.

Jankovic returns a shot from Chakvetadze on her way to a first-round loss

Jankovic, who said yesterday she’s been working to improve her serve, learn to volley, and shorten the points on grass, nonetheless looked uncomfortable in the first set, starting with a string of errors while Chakvetadze barely put a foot wrong for six games. Until 5-1, when Chakvetadze was serving for the set and stopped being able to find her first serve. Five games later, Chakvetadze had to serve to save the set, succeeded, and then dropped a tightly-fought tiebreak.

At that point, it seemed obvious that Chakvetadze was going to melt down further and Jankovic would win in straight sets. Still, the pair stayed level until 3-3, when Chakvetadze saved five break points to go 4-3, then broke Jankovic for 5-3, and served out to love.

In the third set, Jankovic set afterwards, her legs gave out from the strain of having to bend so low to get back all those deep, skidding shots. Her quads started to hurt, and her legs were tired, and she didn’t have the ernergy to keep running.

When you have two slujmping players playing each other, one of them has to lose. Surprising that the one who lost was Jankovic. But Chakvetadze does have a long history of playing on grass – the first time I saw her was at Wimbledon in the juniors, playing Michaela Krajicek probably ten years ago.

Jankovic herself admits that grass is her weakest surface – she’s made the semis of all the other Slams but never been past the fourth round at Wimbledon.