Interesting thoughts by Matt Cronin on JJ:
Jankovic is again saying she has nothing to prove but that’s just
public dribble. She knows she has to win a Slam or she’ll never
garner total respect in the locker room. The Serbian has yet to play great
with the finish line in sight.
In some senses, she shares Nadal’s problems -- that she’s primarily a defensive player on a surface that demands more offense. Jankovic is an excellent hard court player and if you put her out on a back court at Nick Bollettieri’s with no one watching and told her she was playing for academy pride, she might be able to beat the Williams sisters, her arch rival Ivanovic and her old academy nemisis Maria Sharapova in succession. But when you want the world to love you as much as she does, it isn’t very easy to avoid stage fright. While the other aforementioned four aren’t by any means camera shy and have participated in building their own images, none of them could care less if they have an eyelash out of place once they are locked into important matches. The tennis world hasn’t seen that of JJ yet.
In some senses, she shares Nadal’s problems -- that she’s primarily a defensive player on a surface that demands more offense. Jankovic is an excellent hard court player and if you put her out on a back court at Nick Bollettieri’s with no one watching and told her she was playing for academy pride, she might be able to beat the Williams sisters, her arch rival Ivanovic and her old academy nemisis Maria Sharapova in succession. But when you want the world to love you as much as she does, it isn’t very easy to avoid stage fright. While the other aforementioned four aren’t by any means camera shy and have participated in building their own images, none of them could care less if they have an eyelash out of place once they are locked into important matches. The tennis world hasn’t seen that of JJ yet.
This is an interesting time for JJ. For so long she's flown under the radar with people always commenting on how amiable she is and a joy to watch. But now that the expectations have been raised I'm seeing more and more articles that take a deeper look into her head and her psychology. The same thing happened to Ana. She went from being the nice girl next door to "too nice to compete and deal with the pressure." I'm curious to see how JJ will deal with all these whispers if they persist after the AO.
