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PARIS—Two young women have become the world’s newest Grand
Slam titlist, and they’ll share the world’s No. 1
ranking beginning next week.
One goes
by the name Ana Ivanovic, and the other goes by the name
Ana Ivanovic.
One
comes into interview rooms and resonates such resolute
20-year-old sweetness that there’s an urge to want to
protect her against the world’s vast reservoir of
wolves. She pretty much evokes Bambi.
The
other goes out on the tennis court and increasingly
practices a steady ruthlessness that showed on offense
and defense Saturday in a 6-4, 6-3 triumph over
onrushing Dinara Safina that gave Ana Ivanovic—and Ana
Ivanovic—her first French Open title after twice being
the runner-up.
As a
South Carolina-sized, landlocked, former international
pariah of a nation, Serbia celebrated its second Grand
Slam winner this year—Novak Djokovic having won the
men’s title at the Australian Open—the world can expect
to keep seeing the two Ana Ivanovics.
Meet the
first Ivanovic, and it’s hard to imagine the depth of
the latter Ivanovic’s revulsion for losing, even hard to
imagine her serial fist pumps and shouts in Serbian of “Adje!”—”Come
on!”—that punctuate her matches.
Of her
lopsided French Open final loss to Justine Henin in
2007, Ivanovic said, “Obviously, it hurt at the time and
it hurt after, but she’s a great champion. I lost to a
great champion and I learned a lot from her, from the
way she handled herself in that final.”
Of her
Australian final loss to Maria Sharapova in January,
Ivanovic told of several nights thereafter that went
sleepless, relief coming only from her commitment to
play in the ensuing Federation Cup.
 This,
from a woman who won’t turn 21 until November, yet
apparently arrived on Earth—Belgrade, 1987—with the
must-win chromosome.
Almost
three hours after winning on Saturday, Ivanovic told of
a time at age 14 when she’d just signed on with her
manager Dan Holzmann, a businessman who invested in her.
She’d hoped to impress Holzmann but lost, 6-2, 6-3—she
recalled the score—to somebody who shouldn’t have beaten
her, in her opinion.
“I went
to the locker room and I locked myself there and I
wouldn’t come out for about four hours,” she said. Her
camp “wanted to leave and they were like, ‘Come out!
It’s OK!’ “
On
Saturday Holzmann stood in the players’ lounge where
Ivanovic’s parents and kid brother and friends swigged
champagne and, in one case, wore a Serbian flag as a
cape. Ivanovic’s parents—a lawyer (Dragana) and a
businessman (Miroslav, former semipro basketball
player)—crave the background, but Holzmann spoke.
“She’s
very nice and you always need to be cautious of people
not abusing her,” he said, then referred to her as a
“killer” on court.
Then,
“When she finishes she grabs and kisses the girl on the
other side and it’s, ‘Thank you,’ and she’s almost
embarrassed that she won,” he said.
By a
cloudy, chilly Saturday as she crossed Safina’s
remarkable path to the final (match points fended off in
two separate matches, one-set and 5-2 deficits in two
separate matches), Ivanovic looked the sturdy veteran of
the two. She usually controlled a thick match that
featured 20 deuces in 19 games.
When
Safina’s last lunge at a forehand dribbled harmlessly—Safina
noted “tiredness”—Ivanovic dropped her own racket,
buried her face in her hands, and soon received the
trophy from the newly retired defending champion, Henin.
Ivanovic
had watched tennis on TV from age 5 and saw the great
Serb Monica Seles, remembered a tennis school’s phone
number from a commercial and implored her parents to
dial. While Nato bombed Serbia in 1999, she practiced
famously in an empty swimming pool. She moved to
Switzerland for tutelage. She even dined with Seles
herself last summer in New York.
Now the
person Ivanovic realized what the tennis Ivanovic had
just done and said, “After the match, it was like time
stopped. I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or laugh
or scream.”
With two
personas and a great night ahead, surely she could do
all of the above.
‘Greatest ever?’
Meanwhile, Bjorn Borg has no doubt what it would mean if
Roger Federer finally manages to beat Rafael Nadal in
the French Open final.
“He
definitely will be the greatest player ever to play the
game,” Borg said Saturday, a day before No. 1-ranked
Federer meets No. 2 Nadal in their third consecutive
championship match at Roland Garros.
Although
Borg preferred not to make a prediction, he does expect
a tight contest.
“A lot
of people, they say no one can beat Nadal tomorrow, the
way he’s been playing,” Borg said. “But I think Roger
has a really, really good chance.”
Borg
plans to be present Sunday, watching in person as Nadal
tries to equal the Swede’s mark of four consecutive
titles at Roland Garros; just as last year, when he sat
in the front row during the Wimbledon final and watched
Federer beat Nadal to equal Borg’s mark of five
consecutive titles at the All England Club.
“They
produce the best tennis you can play,” said Borg, who
won 11 Grand Slam titles and was only 25 years old when
he played his last major in 1981 before retiring. “It’s
like two artists playing out there, both of them.”
Nadal is
10-6 against Federer—including 8-1 on clay, and 3-0 at
the French Open—making him the only active player to
have faced the Swiss star more than four times and
compiled a winning record against him.
Still,
Federer insists he is confident about his chances
Sunday.
“Of
course I believe,” he said. “I believe very strongly
that this is my year.” (With AP) |
