Jankovic vs Stosur French Open semi-final preview
Between them, Jelena Jankovic and Sam Stosur have reached the semi-finals of the French Open on three previous occasions without progressing to the final, but that will all change for one of them when they face off in the final four this year.
No player has had a tougher path to the penultimate round of the 2010 tournament than Stosur, who defeated four-time s Roland Garros champion Justine Henin in the fourth round, and followed that with a grinding three-set win over top seed Serena Williams in the quarter-finals.
The Australian has now arrived in the semi-finals in Paris for the second consecutive year (she was defeated by eventual champion Svetlana Kuznetsova in the semis in 2009), but this time it’s no surprise to see her name among the last four players remaining in the draw.
Stosur entered the French Open in strong form, having won the title at the Family Circle Cup on green clay in Charleston this spring, and following that with a runner-up performance to Henin in the final of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart.
The seventh seed, who has clearly found her feet on clay, enters this match equipped with a forehand that overpowered Williams, a kick-serve that should make life uncomfortable for Jankovic, and perhaps most importantly, a seemingly ever increasing belief that those weapons are enough to guide her to victory over whichever opponent presents herself on the opposite side of the net.
Next time Stosur steps on court that will be Jankovic, a semi-finalist at the French Open in 2007 and 2008, and a player who has defeated the world No. 7 in three of their four previous matches.
Stosur, however, won the last time the pair played one another in the round of 16 in Miami earlier this year, after Jankovic had defeated her in the semi-finals at Indian Wells on her way to the title not long beforehand.
Like her Gold Coast-based opponent, Jankovic was one of the in-form players on the WTA Tour heading into the French Open, her form on clay underlined at the Italian Open in Rome when she defeated both Venus and Serena Williams on her way to the final.
A bruising three-set semi-final victory over Serena, however, took its toll on the Serb as Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez defeated her to take the title, and that’s the danger for Stosur here.
Whether the momentum she’s built with back-to-back wins over Henin and Serena proves to be an irresistible force when Stosur comes up against the fourth seed, or whether the work she’s been forced to do just to reach this stage of the tournament proves her undoing will only be revealed when the final point is played in her semi-final match.
Prediction: Stosur to reach her first Grand Slam final.
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