In her first match under new coach Nigel Sears, former No. 1 Ana Ivanovic falls 6-3 7-5 to Ayumi Morita at Stanford. Ivanovic just began working with Sears last week. She also rehired her former fitness trainer, Scott Byrnes away from Victoria’s Azarenka's team after Wimbledon. During the grass court season, Ivanovic reached the semifinals of Birmingham and the third rounds of Eastbourne and Wimbledon.
"I just started with a new team and takes time for things to come into place and nerves played a part to impress the new coach, but that’s normal,” she said. "We spoke a lot about things we were working on, but [Nigel said] when you go out there I want you to trust your instincts, but I still thought too much about technical stuff. It’s matter of practicing and doing it over and over until it becomes automatic. A few times I was not aggressive enough and was thinking too much what I had to do."
The 23-year-old, who spent 10 days in at the beach in Spain relaxing with her brother and relatives after Wimbledon, said that she is not going to push herself to get immediate results.
"I know there are few tournaments coming up, I have to defend a lot of points, but for me now until the end of the year it's about getting the work done, consistency, getting the base built up again and getting comfortable with my game." she said. "Of course I'd like to see the results straight away and win tournaments, but sometimes that's how it goes and it takes time to get certain things into place. But I trust this team I have around me and I know good things are going to happen and it's just a matter of time. At the moment, I don't want to put pressure and think about results, just put the hard work in."