Serving up trouble
Kournikova advances despite 23 double faults
Posted: Monday January 18, 1999 10:54 PM
| |
Double trouble: Kournikova has 62 double faults in her last three matches AP |
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- Anna Kournikova showed off a curious strategy -- the occasional accurate serve sneaking in among 23 double faults.
It was a surprise attack style that worked well enough, especially backed up by a reliable return game that produced nine service breaks, and put the 12th-seeded teen into the second round of the Australian Open with a 7-6 (7-1), 7-5 victory Tuesday over an American qualifier, No. 152-ranked Jill Craybas.
Kournikova, 17, shrugged off the double faults -- she had 17 in the first set alone -- and emphasized the way she scrambled to salvage the match.
"I was really fighting and hanging in there in tough times," she said. "I should have been more aggressive, but I figured it out later in the match, then I started doing what I should have done in the beginning."
Kournikova believes her serving problems, which have led to 62 double faults in her last three matches, are "half mental, half technical."
"But it is not like a huge problem," she said. "When you have a mistake in the forehand, nobody notices, but when you make a double fault, everybody talks about it."
They talk about it because no other women, and few men with much harder serves, give away as many free points on serve as Kournikova does. Though sometimes being erratic helps. When she did hit a first serve in once in a while, Craybas looked surprised and had trouble catching up to it.
Another 17-year-old, unseeded Serena Williams, escaped the trouble that bedeviled her sister Venus in an opening day three-setter. With six aces almost offsetting seven double faults, Serena beat Romanian Raluca Sandu 6-2, 6-3.
"Five years from now I would definitely see myself at No. 1," said Serena, ranked No. 26.
Martina Hingis, an 18-year-old who had been No. 1 most the past two years and is the two-time defending Australian champion, breezed through her opening round, 6-1, 6-2 against American Lilia Osterloh.
In men's matches, No. 10 Yevgeny Kafelnikov of Russia beat Sweden's Jonas Bjorkman 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, and No. 15 American Todd Martin outlasted Brazilian Fernando Meligeni 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-1.
If youth is sometimes wasted on the young, Jana Novotna misspent a fair share of years until she won Wimbledon last year.
Her losses were the stuff of legend, filled with chokes and tears.
Now at 30, when other players might look to comfortable retirement, Novotna sees only opportunity. A chance for more grand slam titles. A career that lasts longer than that of fellow Czech native Martina Navratilova, who played until she was 38.
"That's my main goal ... to play longer than Martina," Novotna said. "My first goal already came true, winning Wimbledon, and I'm working on the second one."
And so Novotna is playing the Australian Open for the first time in four years, reshuffling her schedule for an extra shot at a major championship.
A finalist at the Australian in 1991 but an early-round loser the next three years, Novotna skipped the year's first grand slam event the past three years because she felt the seasons were too long and she needed extra rest to prepare for the grind of the ensuing campaigns.
"It really worked for me," she said. "I felt that I was playing better at the end of the season when everybody was tired already, and that's when I won most of my tournaments."
Trouble was, she was giving up a grand slam chance every year on the kind of hard court suited to her balanced game. She hadn't even planned on coming to the Australian Open this year, but changed her mind recently after missing a few months late in 1998 with a back injury.
"I just felt the need to play and stay with the top girls," she said. "At my age, what is important is to stay in good shape and stay physically fit and play as many tournaments as I feel like playing. You just have to schedule your tournaments from one month to another.
"At the beginning of the year, I said I would like to do everything differently. I feel like I need a little bit of variety in my schedule and go by how I feel."
She felt well enough Monday night to win a rain-interrupted match that began with the retractable roof open and ended with it closed as she dispatched Anne-Gaelle Sidot of France 6-4, 6-2.
It wasn't a vintage performance, but Novotna was pleased she got off to a winning start and didn't get hurt. At 30, sometimes that's all that matters.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
| 
