Jana Novotna and Amelie Mauresmo’s Similar Path to Wimbledon Success

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: March 4, 2010

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Two great players who landed the Wimbledon title at relatively late stages of their career, two players who were probably the best volleyers of their generation – its interesting how Amelie and Jana had such similar careers at Wimbledon; Jana in the 1990s and Amelie in the 2000s.  I would like to delve deeper into this scenario.  Lets look at Jana Novotna's Wimbledon career first.

On grass Jana was a lovely player to watch; wonderfully athletic and a very good volleyer, Jana’s game revolved around serve and volley on grass.  Her serve was quite good and when confident Jana was very quick to get to net.  On return of serve, Jana would always look for an opportunity to take the net, looking for the short ball to attack and not afraid to use the backhand slice to keep the ball low as often as possible in the rallies.

Jana got to three Wimbledon finals, taking her third opportunity in 1998 against Natalie Tauziat of France in straight sets.  Before 1998 Jana had some heartbreaking moments, most notably the 1993 final against Steffi Graf when Jana was 4-1 in the third set and then lost confidence at the vital moment when the winning post looked tantalisingly close. 

Jana took a lot of flak for that defeat and had to contend with the “choker” tag for the next five years.  However, Jana did give the Wimbledon crowd some wonderful moments and great Tennis in matches leading up to the finals, so the potential was always there, it was just a question of realising it and taking her opportunities.

That was to come in the 1998 semi-final vs Martina Hingis.  I believe Jana played one of the best matches of her career against Martina avenging her three-set loss in the final the previous year in 1997. 

It was a tactical triumph, really surprising Hingis with strong ground strokes and also hit high quality topspin backhand passing shots when Martina approached the net.  Jana really rushed Martina into errors...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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