Inconsistent Mauresmo overcomes Jankovic to reach the Paris final

Amelie Mauresmo hasn't had the best of form in the last couple of years, after posting a career season in 2006. Inconsistency and tentativeness are qualities that have been associated with her game in recent times, but more worryingly she seems no longer capable of stringing together good matches, a quality with which was in display at a smaller scale yesterday in the Paris Indoors against Jelena Jankovic.

It was the best and worst of Mauresmo in the same match, a topsy-turvy affair that ended in Mauresmo’s favour 6-2 0-6 6-1. As entertaining as it was to watch Mauresmo in full flow at times, it’s worrying that her game seems to be stuck in a fragile state. That particular games and points in matches can so easily impact her standard of play for stretches of matches. But it can work in her advantage as well like it did in this match, where she rode the momentum from the leads she had built for herself to finish strongly in the first and third sets.

Prior to this match, Mauresmo had held a 5-1 match-up advantage over Jankovic, and there was evidence as to why this is the case. Jankovic likes rhythm and pace to feed off and Mauresmo didn’t give her it. Creating heavily topspun shots to open up the court and generate superb angles on both sides combined with an effective slice backhand to stop Jankovic from dictating play and yanking her opponent from side-to-side. All weapons that cause major headaches to Jankovic and her defensive abilities, not being able to maintain consistent enough depth having to hit shots from over her shoulder or when unbalanced.

It was an aggressively-minded Mauresmo, showing superb accuracy on her shots to consistently keep shots out of Jankovic’s reach. The rallies were kept short and whenever Mauresmo created an opening for herself, she seized it at the net. Conditions-wise it looks like playing on a low-bouncing indoor court strongly favours the Frenchwoman. Giving her the extra penetration that she needs on her shots and making it almost impossible for Jankovic to offensively counter Mauresmo’s lethal slice backhand that skids low on the court.

If there was one weakness in the Mauresmo game, it was her forehand approach shot and her ability to deal with midcourt shots on that side. Midcourt short balls are meant to be relatively simple shots to execute for most players but with the western grip that Mauresmo hits her forehand with, she sometimes struggles more with the lower bouncing balls, unable to effectively hit underneath the ball and shanking the ball far too frequently. At times her approach shots lacked direction and depth, landing in the middle of the court giving an easy target for Jankovic to hit a winner.

It's amazing that after Mauresmo's game rapidly descended in the second set, that all it took was one good game in the third set to turn the match. In fact, that particular crucial game was the first that she had won in eight games, where a lesser experienced player would have been happy just to have avoided an embarrassment. But instead Mauresmo used it to fuel herself for the battle, firing herself up believing that she had every chance to take the third set. On the subject of belief, did anyone notice that Mauresmo jogged to the chair at the end of the second set after getting fed a bagel?

Soon enough, the third set started to look more like the first set with the same pattern of play emerging, after an initial battle where both players were pushed on their own service games. Jankovic was relatively erratic herself, her footwork not looking as precise and her shots looking more careless than usual like a bit of a free swing.