Ana Ivanovic crashes out of French Open in second round
Just two years ago, Ana Ivanovic capped an impressive rise to the top of the women’s game by winning her maiden Grand Slam title at the French Open.
Today, the 2008 champion was dispatched from the draw in the second round with relative ease by world No. 28 Alisa Kleybanova, who moves through to the third round after a 6-3, 6-0 victory.
It’s the worst result Ivanovic has recorded in six appearances at Roland Garros, where even as her form and confidence disappeared into a black hole in 2009 she managed to reach the fourth round.
The second round loss will also deal a further blow to the former world No. 1’s ranking, which plummeted to a long-time low of world No. 58 earlier this year before a run to the semi-finals at the Italian Open in Rome helped lift it back inside the top 50.
With the 22-year-old’s love affair with clay re-ignited, there was cause to hope the French Open would provide the stage for Ivanovic to showcase what seemed to be an improvement to her game under the tutelage of new coach Heinz Gunthardt. It wasn’t to be.
Ivanovic began the match by breaking Kleybanova’s serve, managing to exploit Kleybanova’s lack of pace around the court from the off.
If court coverage is the Russian’s biggest weakness then Ivanovic’s is with little doubt her serve, and it wasn’t long before that again began to cause problems for the 2008 French Open champion.
After a foot fault was called on the Serb’s second serve on the opening point of her second service game, and another double fault followed, the match was back on serve. By the time Kleybanova had broken the Serb for a second time to take a 4-2 lead in the set, Ivanovic had already served five double faults.
That was the cue for Ivanovic’s ground strokes to become just that bit less reliable too, as Kleybanova reeled off five games straight to move to a 5-2 lead before Ivanovic held serve to love to stem the flow of games against her.
Forced to serve for the set, the 28th seed did just that, wrapping it up with a love game of her own.
It was Kleybanova who managed to secure the break of serve in the first game of the second set as she exploited Ivanovic’s weaker backhand side. From there, the 20-year-old denied her opponent even a solitary game for the remainder of the match, with Ivanovic in the end departing her favourite Grand Slam with barely a whimper.
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