Third seed Jelena Jankovic was upset 6-2 7-5 by Estonian world No.24 Kaia Kanepi in the third round of the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships.
After taking the first set without giving Jankovic one break point, seed No.16 Kanepi raced to a 4-0 lead in the second set. The world No.3, however, managed to come back, leveling the score at 5-5. Still, at 6-5 for Kanepi, when Jankovic was serving to force a tiebreak, she failed to hold her serve and Kanepi won the match.
Estonian Kaia Kanepi will play Elena Vesnina in the quarterfinals. Vesnina, who upset Svetlana Kuznetsova in the second round, advanced to the final eight when Dominika Cibulkova retired through illness in the third set.
Other third-round matches finished so far on Wednesday:
Venus Williams beat Alize Cornet 6-3 6-2, while Virginie Razzano followed up her win over second seed Dinara Safina by beating Daniela Hantuchova 6-2 1-6 6-2. Defending champion Elena Dementieva defeated Anabel Medina Garrigues 6-1 6-3. Marion Bartoli also had to retire, because of blisters on both feet, so Vera Zvonareva went through. And finally, Ana Ivanovic put out Frenchwoman Camille Pin 6-2 7-6. The Serena Williams vs. Zheng Jie third-round match is currently in progress. (photo: Ralf Reinecke)
So sorry for Jelena. I really love her game but she was not an old Jelena Jankovic. She made a lot of mistakes.
“I think this is one of the worst matches in my career, to be honest”
“For like 15 games I didn’t put the ball on the court. For me it was horrible. My goal was to put two balls on the court and I couldn’t do it. I never played a bad match like this before. I basically gave her the match. I played so badly it was tough for me to even be there on the court.”
Jelena was outplayed plain and simple,Kaia has a big serve and today she overpowered the Serb.Jelena is kinda slumping for some reason….
Ohh! Poor JJ! I don’t know what happen with her! She isn’t playing good. I hope she can play better next tournament
She’s in a very bad phase this year. It could be a mixture of the whole pressure about No.1 ranking and lack of Grand Slam titles (really, there was way too much talk about it), and her new bulkier body which she might find difficult to adapt to.
I don’t know if is the pressure or what but She looks sad 🙁 I hope she can recover soon.
I hope she’ll bring her game back, hopefully even improved.
go kaia…..u come a long way baby =)) from last yr to this month u earned it!!! we’ll be watching u @ indian wells – good luck xoxo the ornamental gang : P