That Woman In The Orange Dress Wins Mind Games

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday January 15, 2009

Will Swanton

A WOMAN in an orange dress was in the car park, grinning like she was crazy. She was performing the tennis equivalent of shadow boxing: hitting pretend serves, clipping pretend volleys, belting pretend groundstrokes while playing pretend rallies. She appeared in need of being locked up, but Elena Dementieva had a quarter-final to play at the Sydney International.

Dementieva's second serve used to be the shower scene from Psycho. When she missed her first attempt, cue the screeching. The greater the importance of the point, the more likely she would be to yip another double fault into the bottom of the net. Having won Olympic gold in Beijing last year, those days were allegedly over when she took on Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska yesterday but just when she was motoring ahead, her demons returned.

She trailed 5-6 in the second set. It was 30-15. She served a double fault. She recovered to reach 40-30 but served another double fault. She soldiered on to win 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 and confirm her status as a genuine Australian Open contender. If Dementieva does win her first grand slam title in Melbourne, there will be a few nerve-jangling moments along the way.

Another Russian, Dinara Safina, beat France's Alize Cornet 6-3, 6-4 to reach the semi-finals. Safina fought back from a 4-1 deficit in the second set for a triumph that did not exactly leave her doing cartwheels all the way back to the locker room.

To the suggestion she must be "pleased" with her win, she replied: "Pleased? I think it was disaster, the match today. The girl had to win the match. If she would be a little bit more experienced - I don't know what she did in 4-1. She gave me the match, I can say. I think either I play completely different tomorrow . . . or I can just take my racquets and whatever. Because that's not the way I want to play. I don't like the way I'm playing. Just totally bad."

She will play Japan's Ai Sugiyama, who received a walkover from an injured Svetlana Kuznetsova. Asked to elaborate on her discontent, Safina said: "It's not the way I want to win the match. I want to win it by myself, not that the girl loses to me. Forget this match and, OK, still good that I win the match because I have another chance tomorrow to go out there and hit the ball as hard as I can and just going for my shots."

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

Back to News Index | Back to Home