* !Picby Pete Bodo*
WIMBLEDON, England—It's an article of faith that the most successful players at Wimbledon are the ones who are the most liquid movers, which would make you think that Jelena Jankovic had good reason to feel confident when she met Kim Clijsters in a first-round battle of former No. 1s.
But you can't be just a good mover and expect to win, just like you can't just be a big server and expect a path to open right to the semifinals, which was a point driven home once again to John Isner on this first day of Wimbledon. The No. 11 seed and highest-ranked American was felled by Alejandro Falla, 6-4, 6-7 (9), 3-6, 7-6 (9) 7-5, after Isner failed to capitalize on a match point at 7-6 in the fourth-set tiebreaker.
This is just the first time Falla has made it out of the first round in the last five years. The Colombian may not be a grass-court wizard, but the 28-year old has now won the fourth match of his career at Wimbledon. That's two more than Isner, who at 27 is a late starter whose record is worst on the surface where most believe that his serve ought to make him one of the best.
"He played well, but I could have been more aggressive out there," a distraught, hurt-looking Isner mumbled after the match, with his shoulders in a permanent hunch and his face cradled in his hands. "Just as I could have been more aggressive in the last match I played, and the tournaments prior to that (that last match was an 18-16 in-the-fifth loss to No. 261 Paul-Henri Mathieu in the second round of the French Open). It's really no excuse for me. You know, I'm serving as well as I have ever served. There's no excuse to be—you know, if I'm serving that well, I feel like I should be seeing a little bit better results, but I'm not. That's my fault."
Jankovic echoed a similar theme after losing. Like Isner, she gave her opponent ample credit, but rued her inability to make the shots and show the requisite confidence and purpose she most needed at the critical times in the match.
"I just didn't execute," she told me after the 6-2, 6-4 beating. "You have to be committed at those important times in a match—the crucial points—committed to do certain things, believe in your shots, go after them, know you can do them well. Somehow I always kind of back up. . ."
I watched the Jankovic match from start to finish, which I can't say for Clijsters' daughter, Jada. It wouldn't do to have Jada sitting in the high-profile player-guest box playing with mommy's iPad, so they stashed the youngster and her nanny in a less conspicuous outpost below the press section along a sideline. You can't blame the child for growing restless; the result was handily prefigured when Jankovic, seeded No. 18, wasted a 40-0 lead with a flurry of errors, including a routine backhand drive volley that she just missed going down the line.
"I gave her the momentum and confidence," Jankovic later admitted. "From then on I was playing catching up."
Jankovic never did get there, mostly because her consistency failed. She played well in patches, especially when she found her groove and extended the rallies, but too many points ended before they really developed, or tested Clijsters. And Clijsters forced the action with go-for-broke cuts, especially with her service return—the most valuable shot for her on the day.
Jankovic showed signs of life at the start of the second set, and put together a nice break of serve for a 2-1 lead. She went up 30-love in the next game, but just as she got rolling the wheels fell off. She made a couple of forehand errors that could only be explained by nerves, and was broken back when Clijsters ripped off a forehand service-return winner. By that time, Jada had grown tired of the iPad and had switched to some sort of comic printed on newsprint, and went to work tearing it up in a way that could only have meant, "Hurry up, mommy. I'm bored."
For a woman who's played just three matches since the end of April, Clijsters had no trouble finding the jugular. At times, Jankovic presented it to her, which explains Clijsters' reaction when she saw what the draw had coughed up for her. "On one hand, I was like, Whew, because she's tough. On the other hand, it was like, Yay, because I've had some of my funnest matches against Jelena." (Clijsters was 7-1 against Jankovic going into this one.)
Back on serve in the second set, Clijsters broke Jankovic for 4-2, but the Serb broke back. It was just a brief glimmer of hope, though, as Clijsters broke Jankovic again in the 10th game, with plenty of help from a shanked forehand, a double fault, and a forehand unforced error on match point.
"It could have been the same score for me," Jankovic mused later, smiling and laughing as she trashed the state of her own game and mind (that's one of the reasons it's actually fun to cover Jankovic's matches). "I had my chances. Every time that it mattered, every time i needed to play better, I found a way to make a mistake. I was doing things for me and for her. She was solid, all credit to her. But I was breaking down on my own. It's not an excuse, it's all my fault. I didn't rise to the occasion, I was a shadow of myself."
