2008 French Open champion Ana Ivanovic advanced to the Madrid semifinals today when she beat 6th seed Angelique Kerber 6-3, 6-1. Ivanovic hit 26 winners and made only 14 unforced errors. Is she "back"? Or was today's excellent performance just a "good day"?
Ivanovic will play Maria Sharapova in the semifinals. Sharapova defeated Kaia Kanepi 6-2, 6-4 in the quarterfinals. Sharapova won, of course, when she played Ivanovic in the semifinals in Stuttgart.
Also advancing was Sara Errani, who brought every bit of her clay court expertise against Ekaterina Makarova, defeating her 6-4, 6-3. Some of the rallies in this match were wonderful.
Finally, defending champion Serena Williams made it to the semifinals, but she took the long way around. Williams defeated clay veteran Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-3, 0-6, 7-5. That is a very rare scoreline for the world number 1, but these things happen now and then. Williams said later that she wasn't really sure what happened in the second set, but that she just wasn't herself. Medina Garrigues, by the way, came very close to having a couple of match points. Being close to a victory doesn't tend to mean that much, however, when Williams is on the other side of the net.
Competing in the doubles final will be the team of Cara Black and Marina Erakovic and the team of Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Lucie Safarova. Both teams are unseeded.
6 comments:
Too bas about makarova but it would be great to see Ivanovich make a true comeback.
If she beats Sharapova and goes to the final, we could well be looking at a true comeback. If she doesn't, it's wait and see.
Diane, my fingers are crossed behind my back as I say this, but she has been playing fantastically well for the last few weeks. I think if she is not intimidated by going to the final, she can take out Pova. She moved superbly today and her backhand was standing up under pressure. She is still chasing the toss, esp when she is under pressure, but her serve out wide was killing Kerber today.
Kerber is reminding me of why I can't be a fan. She seems to have adopted the Sloane mentality of, if I get to the 1/4s or semis of tournaments, I am fine. She just had no answers for Ana today & seemed like she wanted to get off the court. She has no fight in her and it annoys me.
Did you see the video of AMG allegedly tampering with the new balls prior to them coming into play against Serena? Understand that the WTA is investigating. If it is cheating, AMG should get a big fat zero for her effort today.
I didn't see the video but I heard about it. It's always something.
Ivanovic in top form is killer.
What effect would roughing up the balls have clay court competition?
Here's the link to the video. Even the (usually laid back) WTF commentator remarked that hadn't ever seen "anything like that before."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpCy8C5iZQM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Arsdorf, you bring up a good point, since generally, red clay is slow. However the Madrid clay surface is known for being faster than others, so it makes sense that AMG would want to slow things down. (What doesn't make sense is that she would do such a thing--and in full view.)
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