Championship Day at the Rogers Cup in Toronto has finally come with the first two seeds going head to head at the title. We have Serbian and number two seed Jelena Jankovic on one end while we have World Number One and seed number one, Belgian’s own Justine Henin on the other. How will things play out? Keep reading!
Things already got tense as the first point was played with Justine starting things off with a bang. After a scrapy game one that Justine could have broken, Jelena saved her service game. Justine then saved her service game and again had the break chances on Jelena’s serve but was not able to convert. At 2-1 for Jelena, Justine had problems with her serve and a couple of unforced errors later, Jelena broke for the 4-1 lead. Justine did not let Jelena run away with the game though, she broke back right away and leveled the match at 5-5.
At that point, neither of the ladies would let up a point. Gutsy, aggressive play from both women were played each point and got the crowd all excited with net points and great angle shots. This first set went to a tie-break. Justine started everything by first breaking Jelena then winning the tie-break 7-3. First set for Justine 7-6 (7-3) in over an hour.
When it seemed like momentum was going for Justine just as she finished winning the first set, she seemed to lose her focus as she got broken on the first game of the second set. Jelena was able to hold her serve and then brake Justine again to go up 3-1. Again at 4-1, Justine held her serve and then broke Jelena’s to go up to 5-4. Being faced a championship point at 30-40 for Jelena, she fought and ended up saving it to level at 5 all. In the end, Justine had the mental strength to keep it up and win the second set 7-5.
Final score 7-6(3) 7-5 in over 2 hours.
With this win, Justine has won 6 of the 10 tournaments she has entered and is 7-0 in the head to head with Jelena.
This was a great match to watch for the fans. It got loud at times because of the excitement, which caused both players to complain to the umpires but in the end, both players enjoyed the atmosphere and the hype around this match. There were more than just one point that could be called the highlight of the match. Both women played their high level tennis with aggressiveness, concentrations and some laughs.
“Jelena is a real fighter … and she proved it many times this year, so I was ready for a big fight.”[quoted by Justine]
Jelena has won 4 tournaments this year of the 5 career titles she already have. She has improved drastically and is real great player to watch out in the near future. Credits to the shots and fight that Jelena put up with today.
I’m glad Justine played until the end because she had a shoulder injury when she played Nadia Petrova.
“Yeah, that was true. Because last night I was really concerned about my problem with my shoulder. It was really inflamed. Last night I wasn’t really positive about the fact that I could play today. So I really wanted to wait until my warm-up and I was feeling much better this morning.”[quoted by Justine]
”It’s going to be sore for a few days, I know it because that’s a pain I’ve known for a couple of years. I’ll be fine for the Open, but I was really concerned about playing on it today. I was glad I could make it, because it would have been really rough on it for me and for the tournament not to play the final.”[quoted by Justine]
This is the first tournament since the semi-final disappointment in Wimbledon, but that is all behind Justine now as she is forging ahead to the U.S. Open with great expectations since winning this tournament.
“Wimbledon seems far away for me now, it’s been disappointing, for sure, because I’m a competitor. I hate to lose. And especially in the Grand Slam semifinal, a tournament where I had a lot of expectations … Wimbledon is in the past now, I just want to stay focused on the Open.” [quoted by Justine]
