Ana Ivanovic ready for Australian Open challenge
After finishing her season with a flourish, claiming two titles in the autumn, Ana Ivanovic has returned to the top-20 and can rightly reignite those Grand Slam dreams for season 2011.
“My confidence is back and tennis is so much more fun when you are confident about your game,” Ivanovic wrote in a blog on her website after winning the title at the Tournament of Champions in Bali. “Now I will have a short holiday, then begin training for next season. Melbourne [where the Australian Open is held] can't come soon enough!”
There’s no doubting the competitive juices are now flowing again for the former world No. 1, and her enthusiasm for next year’s first Grand Slam, a tournament where she was a finalist in 2008, is understandable given her current form.
It’s a 180 degree turnaround from the position Ivanovic was in 12 months ago, when she limped to the end of a disappointing 2009 season in the midst of an on-court malaise for which there seemed to be no immediate cure.
The addition of Heinz Gunthardt as coach earlier this year (though the partnership with Steffi Graf’s former coach has since been dissolved as Ivanovic searches for a full-time coach for next season) was a major positive for the former world No. 1, though it took until the latter stages of the season for the work Ivanovic had been doing on the practice court to bear fruit.
The 2008 French Open champion finally drew a line under her prolonged form slump, which earlier in the season saw her ranking plummet to world No. 65, when she claimed her first title in two years at the Generali Ladies Linz, with an authoritative win over Patty Schnyder in the final.
That victory saw Ivanovic qualify for the Tournament of Champions in Bali, where on the weekend she claimed victory over Alisa Kleybanova in the final, after winning through a tough match against 40-year-old Kimiko Date Krumm in the semi-finals on the day of her 23rd birthday.
They may not, in terms of the opponents the Serb defeated, have been victories of the highest order but they are the culmination of an upturn in form that saw Ivanovic reach the fourth round of the US Open, and win through two tiebreak sets against Elena Dementieva in Beijing during October.
That, and the fact Ivanovic knows what it takes to mix it with the best and win a major, provides ample reason to believe that the world No. 17 will be in the mix come the Grand Slams next year, beginning at the Australian Open in January.
Tags: