Roland Garros

Fighting spirit of girls on top

by Paul Myers

Article published on the 2008-05-30 Latest update 2008-05-30 15:46 TU

The Czech Republic's Petra Cetkovska celebrates after defeating her compatriot Iveta Benesova
(Photo: Reuters)

We all love a heart-rending story. Few have been more poignant than Justine Henin’s tale of how she visited Roland Garros as a ten-year-old girl with her mother who died two years later from cancer.

That kind of tale gives a human backdrop to what would be a fairly mundane tennis circus.

The Serbian players Novak Djokovic and Ana Ivanovic have yarns about practice sessions in their native Serbia between the Nato bombing raids in the mid 90s.

Well adversity clearly hasn’t harmed them for Djokovic won this year’s Australian Open and Ivanovic is barely out of her teens and is already world number two. She lost in the 2007 Roland Garros final to Henin.

We thought then that this could be a lasting rivalry. Both girls had it tough but, with the Belgian quitting tennis at 26, that’s not going to happen.

Even though she’s gone up a place in the world rankings due to Henin’s retirement, Ivanovic, far from being gleeful about the world number one’s early demise, said she regretted the move as she’d now lost the chance to beat her.

That’s the kind of combative spirit you need to do well at the top. It probably separates the women from the girls - so to speak.

Well, on Friday one of the girls thrashed one of the women. The 27th seed Katarina Srebotnik dispatched the fifth seed and former champion Serena Williams in straight sets.

Williams was not beaming. The Slovakian was contentment incarnate. She spoke about being consistently between 20 and 30 in the world rankings over the past few years and always in the third round of most of the grand slams.

While I don’t think she’ll go on to win this year’s title, the victory keeps all the players honest – to use a British footballing expression. They have to work for each triumph knowing that mistakes can cost games.

It will be interesting to see how Srebotnik copes in her next match when she’ll be carrying enhanced expectations. If she gets through that she’ll be into the quarter finals of a grand slam for the first time in a decade or so on the women’s circuit.

A career-defining moment approaches though still not in the hemisphere of precision air-raids and lost mothers.