Henin Edges Past Jankovic

Written by Aleksandra Depowska 

Justine Henin proved to be undisputed queen of clay, as she defeated Jelena Jankovic of Serbia 7-5 2-6 6-4 to reach her second Warsaw final. The two entertained Warsaw audience with top-quality rallies for more than 2 hours and a half. Unseeded Alona Bondarenko of Ukraine became a surprise finalist after she crushed Svetlana Kuznetsova.

The semifinal match between the two most successive clay-courters of the year so far will be remembered for its world class level. Henin opened with a 4-0 lead, but the Serbian refused to give up and levelled at 4-4. In an extremely close eleventh game Jankovic had a chance to break her opponent, but the Belgian found her service rhythm on time and managed to hold. With number of successive topspins, she forced the opponent to errors and closed the set 7:5.

In the second act Jankovic chose to constantly attack Henin, she varied the game with more of approach shots, and came to the net more frequently than in previous act. This, together with Henin’s surprising unforced errors, led the Serbian to level at 1 set all after winning the set 6-2.

The Belgian number one didn’t let her concentration slip in the deciding act, and generated pressure on Jankovic, making her step back to the defence. The 2-time French Open champion took a lead 3-1, but this didn’t distract the fearless Serbian, fought back using her passing shots and made it 3-3. At 4-4 she entertained the spectators with a spectacular split, but this was not enough to challenge the in-form favourite, who won the next two games.

“A few points decided on the win,” said Jankovic. “I guess her experience paid off today. She was more calm whereas I tended to make mistakes when I was supposed to. For the first 4 games it was she didn’t commit any error, and I thought, ‘if she’s going to play like this for the whole match, how I’m going to win a game?’. I kept going for my shots, did my best and there was nothing I could do more about it. I think the only chance for me to beat her is to hope for a little worse performance of hers.”

Alona Bondarenko will be Henin’s opponent en route to the Belgian’s second Warsaw trophy. The Ukrainian eliminated the 3-time Warsaw finalist Svetlana Kuznetsova, who the day after winning a thrilling 3-setter against Venus Williams showed no consistency and committed 46 unforced errors to lose 2-6 6-7.