So this is the week in which Fantasy Tennis players can sign up to win megabucks in the ATP Tour Sweepstakes from Cincinnati. Just pick all the winners through the final this week and you earn a cool million. Flies have flown into my ointment though, and my chance is probably already gone, thanks to Nikolay Davydenko. He had the unmitigated gall to drop his opening match yesterday to Juan Ignacio Chela. My co-writer was correct when she advised everyone to think twice about betting on the Russian against Chela. So off to the Gulag with him, I say.

The interesting news from the men’s field in Toronto last week was that Roger Federer won a nice-looking final and it wasn’t against Rafael Nadal. Three challengers came forward to ruffle the feathers of the Fed in consecutive matches that all went three sets. Tursunov, Malisse and Gonzalez had a go at the man on top. Gonzalez’ raging forehand especially got under Federer’s skin; it is not very often that we see a look of fear and nerves cross Roger’s face like it did during this match. He is human, he does sweat on occasion.

In the final things got even tighter when Federer ran into Frenchman Richard Gasquet. He really made a dent, at least in a brilliant first set of play. Roger asserted himself finally to win the match in three, but after this week it looks very good to see guys trying to make life a little interesting for Roger Federer, and for us. Credit to Gasquet, whose game certainly mirrors a lot of Federer’s. He will nail the Fed at some point, as he did last year in Monte Carlo.

Women’s tennis began the week with everyone interested in whether Sharapova’s game could stay steady after her first win over Kim Clijsters in the Carlsbad final the week before, and whether Serena Williams could even stay around in the draw after a lengthy lay-off due to her chronic knee problem.

But we ended up talking about the combative skill on display in the final between Elena Dementieva and Jelena Jankovic of Serbia, who put on a great show for a good-sized crowd in Carson, California at the JPMorgan Chase Open. Every so often the women play a final that’s right up there with the men, that deserves equal pay. I think we got that on Sunday. A little surprising it wasn’t between Sharapova and Williams, but in the end I like to think no one really missed them. We had enough of a feast as it was, in this 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 battle that Dementieva finally won.

What a breath of fresh air Jankovic appears to be! I love her attitude on court, especially on change-overs. Instead of hunkering down in her chair in a pose of morbid contemplation, Jelena is looking around at the crowd with a bemused expression. She notices what is going on, she reacts to it, she smiles at the camera as it tries to catch kissing spectators in the act. If this is her way of dealing with nerves, it’s a good one, but the girl seems to be without nerves.

She is an interesting looking girl, with a long wide face and planes that seem lifted from a woman in a painting by Modigliani. Fairly tall, fairly thin, moves well and seems to understand positioning on court. Her mom is a plumpish bottle blonde who travels with her on tour. Jelena doesn’t seem to resemble her at all. Her family life sounds consistent and normal.

Jelena reads books too, and attends college courses when she can, because a tennis career is “way too short,” as she puts it, and she’d like to line up a few skills for down the road after tennis. She is, as she puts it humorously, one of the few women players who has seen the inside of a classroom of higher learning.

This past Sunday’s event will register as a defining moment in her young career, and she is clearly ready for more.

“I really enjoy my time on court,” says Jelena. That is the first thing out of her mouth, and obviously it ranks high on her motivation list. “I can do a lot of damage at the Open. I showed I can beat all these players. I believe in myself. I have big potential.”

She whacked Serena Williams around for two sets in the semi-finals, showed she could handle her power and gave no sign of nerves that could have turned a two-setter into three. At one point Jelena knocked a ball across the net toward the ball boy, but it nailed Serena accidentally. They had a brief discussion over that at match’s end, but even that got cleared up. Jankovic appears to be a class act who can handle herself well.

She was ranked 28th in the world going into the final, now she moves up to 21st.

Out of curiosity, I went to her stats and noticed that she’s had a rocky start to the first part of this year. She won her first match of the year, an opening rounder at the Australian Open against the very fit American veteran, Jill Craybas. But then she proceeded to drop ten matches in a row before she got on track at the Italian Open, where she lost in three sets to Venus Williams in the fourth round. Venus Williams again came along to form a high point of Jankovic’s year, this time in the third round at Wimbledon, where Jankovic beat her in three sets.

Why such a poor start to her year? Apparently an odd virus hit her, sounding akin to what Justine Henin-Hardenne went through. It sapped Jelena Jankovic’s strength to the point where she was thinking about giving up the game altogether at the end of last year. Being sick is never fun, and being able to have fun is what Jankovic really likes to have.

Jankovic’s shots were strong and deep off both wings, she seems to have no problem going for them. Or for her serves. If her game had a weakness Sunday, it was in her failure to move forward enough. She attempted a few forays early in the match, but ended up dumping shots into the net. That scared her off coming in again, until well into the third set, when the necessity of being down 5-0 forced her in. When she got there, she showed she could win a few points.

At the start of the third, Jelena pulls out a nifty drop shot winner, then blows a kiss to the appreciative crowd.

Her game is basically a strong baseline game, but because of her powerful shots she should be playing more at net. She is going to force a lot of weak replies from opponents, that is the time she should be moving forward, to pick off those wounded ducks in mid-air. If she needs to play more doubles to learn net skills, she should play doubles then.

This is a girl who has discovered the thrill of being aggressive, and that is probably the best way to play someone like Elena Dementieva. What about Dementieva’s game on Sunday? And what about that…that…serve, shall we call it? Well, that serve. She’s trying. Actually it was one of Dementieva’s better serving days. She kept the double faults to a minimum, although toward the end of the match she reverted under pressure to that sidearm delivery. For a few moments there I thought we were witnessing the reincarnation of Dodgers’ pitcher Don Drysdale.

To Dementieva’s credit though, her obnoxious-looking serve has forced her to nail down tight the rest of her game. She is unbelievably steady now from anywhere else on court, except in the server’s stance. She knows she probably got a bit lucky on Sunday, and her experience helped her out. She ran out to a 5-0 lead only to see it melt a bit in the face of Jankovic’s persistent play.

Of Jankovic’s game Dementieva says, “She is very unpredictable.”

Indeed. And a lot of fun to watch. Good things do happen in women’s tennis sometimes, and this week it was Jelena Jankovic who happened.