In a battle of two former No.1s, one much more former than the other, Ana Ivanovic has again awaken the hopes of her revival, showing her devastating forehand and beating defending champion and world No.4 Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets in the fourth round of Indian Wells.
In the 6-3 6-2 victory, Ivanovic displayed her best shots even from uncomfortable positions. Her precise forehand challenged the defensive Wozniacki. And that’s not all, Ivanovic served out the match at love, which is a nice cherry on the cake for the Serb’s potentially lethal but error-prone serve. Ivanovic broke Wozniacki’s serve five times, twice at 15 and three times at 30.
In the quarterfinals, Ivanovic will face former Wimbledon finalist, seventh seed Marion Bartoli, who beat Lucie Safarova 6-1 6-4. Imagine, the last meeting of Ivanovic and Bartoli was last year, also at Indian Wells and also in the quarterfinals. Bartoli won then, 6-4 7-6(4). (photo: © Neal Trousdale)
A good performance from Ana but Caroline,oh dear… That was a pretty poor showing 🙁
Not even suprised by score..Ana was great,but Caro was just pushing all the match 😛
“She just went on a roll,” [Wozniacki] said. “She started to hit the ball harder, and, you know, it was going in. I stepped back a little bit, and it gave her the time to do what she wanted.” And Samantha Smith (former top British player herself) said, commenting the match, that Caroline did not actually play much under her usual level. These two things and my own impression while watching ad up: Ana simply overwhelmed Caroline so that she *could not* play any better (at moments she looked almost pitifully stunned). Also, the sheer brilliance of the former’s game made the latter’s look even poorer.
Chris Evert via Twitter: “Ana Ivanovic is back! I think she is going to have a great year.”