Jankovic Riding High Into Roland Garros

With less than a week to go before the French Open begins in Paris, uncertainty reigns in the women's game perhaps more than ever. Over the past 30 years, tennis fans have become accustomed to a very small number of women dominating the game at any one time. Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf and Monica Seles owned the tour during their respective careers from the mid-70's through the mid to late 90's. A look at the winners of the four Majors during this time period will show these ladies' names over and over again with few exceptions.

Since Martina Hingis' ascension to the number 1 ranking in 1997, there has been greater depth at the top of the game with the rise of the Williams Sisters, Lindsay Davenport, the Russian Revolution and a pair of talented Belgians, thus adding a little more intrigue to the tour. Recent Grand Slam title winners have come from this list, but the 2007 French Open may be different as none of the usual suspects appears to be playing all that well or even playing at all – Martina Hingis and Kim Clijsters to name a couple. It may be time for a new rising star.

That rising star may have been seen this past weekend in Rome, where Jelena Jankovic captured her first Italian Open title without losing a set and perhaps signaled to the rest of the WTA Tour that she is ready to win a major. With the victory, the 22 year-old Serbian rose to a career high singles ranking of number 4 in the world. Since a 1-10 start to the 2006 season, Jankovic has rebounded to become a force to be reckoned with on the WTA Tour, going 44-17 for the remainder of the season including a semifinal appearance at the US Open.

Her 2007 campaign began in torrid fashion with a 12-2 record on the Australian swing where she won her first of three titles this year, and although she had a disappointing Spring on American hard courts, she seems to have found her game in time for Roland Garros. However, this talented and athletic player does have a couple of hurdles to overcome before she can claim her first Grand Slam title. One is simply the ability to handle the big moment in a major. In last year's US Open semifinal versus Justine Henin, Jankovic struggled mentally after relinquishing a large lead and it appeared that she wasn't able to handle the occasion of her first Grand Slam semifinal. Double faults crept into her game and she was visibly shaken in the third set which she lost at love.

The other hurdle that stands between Jankovic and glory in Paris is Justine Henin. Jankovic's record against Henin is 0-5 with four of those losses coming in the last year. All of their head-to-head encounters have gone three sets. After her victory in Rome, Jankovic joked that the only reason she won the event was because Justine didn't play and those words are telling when considering the Serbian's state of mind regarding Henin. She knows that she needs to beat Henin soon for her own confidence and to erase the memories of some recent painful losses to the world's number one including blowing a 4-0 advantage in the third set of their Berlin quarterfinal.

When watching Jankovic play tennis, it's obvious that we are watching an elite athlete in action. She glides across the court in a way that few women do, and her groundstrokes are extremely fluid, especially her two-handed backhand. Physically, she oozes talent and one can't help but be impressed by her athleticism. However, physical talent is only a portion of the equation when it comes to winning a tournament of the magnitude of the French Open. Mental strength, especially on red clay, is a major component of success at the highest level of the game and it is that strength that Jelena Jankovic will have to demonstrate if she is to capture her first Grand Slam title at Roland Garros. Can she do it? Well, the opportunity is certainly there for the taking this year and here's hoping that she can pull it off.