{"id":771,"date":"2008-01-14T21:16:19","date_gmt":"2008-01-15T05:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=771"},"modified":"2008-01-14T21:16:19","modified_gmt":"2008-01-15T05:16:19","slug":"whod-you-rather-ana-or-jelena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/whod-you-rather-ana-or-jelena\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019d You Rather: Ana or Jelena?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Join us for the men’s Australian Open final! We\u2019ll be blogging live on Sunday morning, January 27, at 12:30am (PST)\/3:30am (EST)\/9:30am (CET). We’ll stay up if you’ll stay up.<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic exchanged places in the rankings, Novak Djokovic breezed through his first round match at the Australian Open, and Viktor Troicki ain\u2019t looking too bad either.<\/b><\/p>\n

I was watching Viktor Troicki<\/b> play his first round match against Rafael Nadal<\/b> at the Australian Open today and a thought hit me: Could it be? Is net play actually coming back into fashion? In case you\u2019ve forgotten, net play is the act of approaching the net by choice instead of necessity.<\/p>\n

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/b> took Andy Murray<\/b> out yesterday by pressuring him at the net early in the match and here was Troicki hitting a forehand slice approach to get his butt to the net against Nadal. Nadal won the match 7-6(3), 7-6, 6-1, but it was closer than the score indicated and Troicki looked good. As Nadal said, “He played very, very aggressively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Troicki is a 6’4” (193 cm) player from Serbia who is ranked 126 in the world. Hardly seems fair that Serbia might have another promising player to add to Jelena Jankovic<\/b>, Ana Ivanovic<\/b>, and Novak Djokovic<\/b>.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m on about the Serbs, I\u2019d like to elaborate on a point I made about Jelena in my post yesterday. Jelena is one of my favorite players because she\u2019s an idealist. She isn\u2019t grinding for points and money, she wants to get the number one ranking and that\u2019s why she\u2019s out here. If tennis doesn\u2019t work out, she has an alternative plan. She\u2019ll return to Megatrend University in Belgrade \u2013 I hope it\u2019s a business school with a name like that, complete her education and be happy to do so.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the question: How idealistic is Jelena?<\/p>\n

If she really is interested only in the number one ranking, will she drop out of tennis and return to University if her ranking drops down to, say, the thirties? Or will she hang around for as many years as possible extracting every last bit of life out of tennis. Not that there\u2019s anything wrong with that, mind you, but there\u2019s something very appealing about someone who has other fish to fry. Someone who thinks of something else besides accumulating as much money has humanly possible. It\u2019s a rare thing in today\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

Most tennis players hang around as long as possible and do little afterwards, but I have hope for Jelena because she\u2019s different. She\u2019s unconventional in a way that her fellow Serb, Ivanovic, is conventional. Jelena is unconventionally beautiful and unconventionally outspoken. Okay, Ivanovic is a smoldering hot beauty, but she\u2019s the last person likely to say anything remotely controversial. She cares way too much.<\/p>\n

It cannot be easy for Jelena to be compared to Ivanovic. Jelena has lost to her five out of the six times they\u2019ve played and Ivanovic just took away Jelena\u2019s number three ranking. Not only that but Ivanovic is already a sex symbol and she just signed a racket deal with Yonex that could pay her more than $10,000,000 over four years.<\/p>\n

Ivanovic is only 20 years old so who knows how she\u2019ll develop and mature as a person. But for my money, I\u2019ll take the devil may care Jelena any day.<\/p>\n

I Told Ya So<\/b><\/p>\n

Stefan Koubek<\/b> took out Carlos Moya<\/b> today, 7-6(5), 6-7(2-7), 7-5, 6-4. I told you Moya would not get to a fourth round matchup with Nadal. This is the fourth year in a row Moya has lost in the first round.<\/p>\n

I know you all disagree with my Gasquet pick – I have him beating Nadal and getting to the final – but the way Nadal looked today I might not be far off. He struggled at times.<\/p>\n

Farid, you were right about Ivan Ljubicic<\/b>. He\u2019s out already after losing to Robin Haase<\/b> in four sets. Are James Blake<\/b>‘s chances looking any better right about now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Join us for the men’s Australian Open final! We\u2019ll be blogging live on Sunday morning, January 27, at 12:30am (PST)\/3:30am (EST)\/9:30am (CET). We’ll stay up if you’ll stay up. Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic exchanged places in the rankings, Novak Djokovic breezed through his first round match at the Australian Open, and Viktor Troicki ain\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,105,23,30,52,112,57,72,81,82,84,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ana-ivanovic","category-andy-murray","category-australian-open","category-carlos-moya","category-ivan-ljubicic","category-jelena-jankovic","category-jo-wilfried-tsonga","category-novak-djokovic","category-rafael-nadal","category-richard-gasquet","category-robin-haase","category-viktor-troicki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}