By Mike McIntyre
On Thursday night it was a Tornado that pushed the tennis at the Rogers Cup into the wee hours of the morning. On Friday night it was Alisa Kleybanova who shocked fifth seeded Jelena Jankovic and pushed the night session into extra innings with her 6-7(6), 7-6(7), 6-2 win that took 3 hours and 16 minutes to complete.
The match was a back and forth battle that saw numerous breaks of serve and even more challenges using the Hawkeye replay system. Jankovic challenged thirteen times and was correct on seven of those. Kleybanova challenged on eight but was only successful on two. Jankovic was more than candid in her post-match press conference about the bad calls.
"Those challenges saved me. There were so many bad calls. It was exactly in front of the umpire, and they wouldn't see. Then you have to use the challenges, and then at the end you have none because it's so close, and the referee should at least tell you."
The officiating was so suspect that in the first set Jankovic challenged one of her own serves that was called good. The serve was out by at least a foot and Jankovic stood in disbelief as Kleybanova hit it back and received a point for it. The challenge proved Jankovic's point and the point was replayed on a second serve.
"That I've never seen before in my life where I missed (by) so much. It was like this much out, and she would be like, no, no, your serve was good. I'm challenging my serve to be out against myself, you know, because she didn't see it."
The match itself could not have been any more dramatic and the first two sets in particular could have gone either way. In the first, Kleybanova was up 4-1 in the tiebreak and blew several set points before Jankovic clawed her way back to win it. In the second, Jankovic had a match point that she squandered in the tiebreak before Kleybanova pulled it out. In the third set the Serbian simply ran out of gas as she openly admitted after the match.
"I went to bed at four in the morning. You know, it's a long drive to the hotel, and all of a sudden you can't relax after such a tough thing. It was difficult for me. So you know, I'm not a machine. I played quite a lot, and it's been a while since I played so many matches, so it took a toll on me, but what can I do? I really gave everything I had today, and unfortunately it wasn't enough."
For Kleybanova it is clear that she is now riding a wave of confidence that she hopes will carry on for at least another match.
"I think today was the best match that I've done, you know, for myself. It was really - mentally I think I played the best, and I'm happy that I went through even match point down and a lot of set points that I didn't use in the first set, and I think you know, it's really good for me, for my confidence, that I went through all that, and I was able to win 6-2 in the final set"
Kleybanova advances to the semi-finals Saturday where she will meet Maria Sharapova who defeated Agnieszka Radwanska 6-2, 7-6(5) in a match that went beyond 1:00am local time.
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