In her quarter final match, Serena Williams described an 'out-of-body experience' she was having against Svetlana Kuznetsova. However, whereas Serena's slump was for a set, Ivanovic's has been going strong for many months now, and shows no sign of relenting. Last year, the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour thought they had struck gold with Ivanovic. She was the person who could lift women's tennis out of Henin's shock retirement. Comparatives with Sharapova were always inevitable (she's hot, to put it bluntly), but she seemed to have what Masha didn't: the beaming smile on court, the sense of national pride and the lack of grunting. Sponsors wanted her like crazy, with Yonex grabbing a racket deal worth a whopping forty million dollars and adidas printing her face all over their posters. Come May, and Ivanovic was lifting the French Open trophy high above her head after two weeks of phenomenal tennis, cracking the comeback queen Dinara Safina in the final 6-4, 6-4.
But bad things started to happen. At Wimbledon, she crushed Rossana de los Rios in her first round and everyone was talking her up. Her next match against Nathalie Dechy was a wake up call. Dechy had a match point in the second set and fortunately for Ivanovic, lady luck beamed upon her, causing an extremely lucky ball to practically roll along the width of the net before dropping over. She edged through, but in her next match she was not so fortunate. The world number 133, Jie Zheng, pushed her around the court until the flaky Ivanovic looked like a club player. Zheng won, 6-1, 6-4, and became Wimbledon's darling, whilst Ivanovic trundled away, dejected.
She blamed injury for her loss and was forced to withdraw from the Olympics, and just got to the US Open. This wasn't wholly a good thing. Her first match against Russian Vera Dushevina was going swimmingly when she choked. Ivanovic just croaked through in three sets. It was just putting off her inevitable though, as she was bundled out by the world number 188 Julie Coin in the second round, a catastrophic upset. Ivanovic could not hide behind the curtain of injury anymore, and said she just needed to find rhythm again. It didn't come easily. Losses to Nadia Petrova, Jie Zheng and Dominika Cibulkova swiftly followed, and her year looked over. However, there was respite on the indoor courts of Austria and Switzerland. In Zurich, she pushed eventual champion Venus Williams all the way, before losing a tight three set contest in her semi final. In Linz, as the top seed, she reigned supreme over Vera Zvonareva after a majestic performance in the final. The respite turned out to be brief, as at the Year-End Championships she put in two meek performances before withdrawing with a virus.
2009 was seen by many Ivanovic fans as the new season, a time for a fresh start. In Brisbane, she was the star attraction, but it was clear very soon she was in no kind of form to win, and she was trashed by a supreme Amelie Mauresmo, 6-2, 6-3, in the quarter-finals, and then decided to skip Sydney. Ivanovic then turned up to the Australian Open, playing German Julia Goerges. She soon went a break down and many groaned. "Surely this wouldn't happen for a third straight Slam? Losing to a non-top 100 player again?" Ivanovic turned the match round and won her next encounter against the Italian player, Alberta Brianti, in straight sets. However, she met her match against Russian teen Alisa Kleybanova, and after over two and a half hours of pulsating play, she lost. This came after she served for the first set at 5-3 and went on to lose it 7-5.
Overall, Ivanovic's outlook doesn't look bright, and it looks like that since winning the French Open, something has snapped in her mind. Winning a Grand Slam looks to have been fairly terminal for Mauresmo (and her talented appendix) as she now seemingly can rarely beat anyone higher than her own ranking, and Ivanovic could be heading down that avenue if she's not careful. However, Ivanovic is still young and has a lot of mileage left. She has a lot to give and I would highly doubt that this is the end for the Serbian player.
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