Bad Luck for Lady J

So if I were Jelena Jankovic, I would be in a massive snit right now.

I've been pretty critical of JJ in the past, but she really brought it all to the table in Fed Cup at the weekend. She played some stellar matches to beat first Alisa Kleybanova and then, more tellingly, Svetlana Kuznetsova. And, if we are to believe her website, she came within a hair's breadth of pulling out injured and yet she played and won anyway. Quality work for Lady J.

Ana Ivanovic, on the other hand, has no such excuse. She isn't exactly match tired, given as she managed to win a grand total of a set at this year's Australian Open. She isn't injured, as far as anyone's aware. All she seems to do is lope around on golf courses with Adam Scott, though I presume, she, like, trains and stuff. And she contributed absolutely nothing to the Serbian team on the weekend. She got steamrolled by both Kuznetsova and Kleybanova before dragging Jankovic down with her in the doubles. Who else is on the Serbian team? Couldn't Jankovic have played with a different partner?

It is such a shame, because the Serbian Fed Cup team should be, by all rights, awesome. How did the Ana who won Roland Garros in 2008 and reached the final year before turn into this pale shadow of what she was? What exactly went wrong?

Sigh. Alas for them.

You know who I was impressed with, though? (Apart from Lady J, obviously?) Yanina Wickmayer. Belgium could be such a force in Fed Cup this year if they get Kim and Justine back in the side - or even just one of them, because Yanina is seriously awesome. I really like her chances of breaking into the top ten this year. She has some moves. That match she played against Agnesizka Radwanska has to be the match of the weekend. And Kirsten Flipkens definitely did not disappoint either. Imagine Kim, Justine, Yanina and Flipper making up a Fed Cup team. Now that would be sweet.

Something else that could also be sweet is the Russia/USA match up in the next round. What we should be seeing is some combination of Safina/Dementieva/Kuznetsova/Zvonareva/Sharapova taking on the Williams sisters. What I suspect we'll see is Melanie Oudin vs Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, but I can hope...

The JuJu juju

Another quick hit today, because I'm not sure how much I have to write about it - Justine Henin. She's back.

I have been, I admit, very dubious about her comeback - I didn't believe she was going to do it all the way up until the announcement. And I am, I confess, still not wholly on board. When she quit tennis in May last year, she looked so... broken. She hated tennis. She didn't want anything to do with it. And I haven't seen anything to suggest to me that that might have changed...

...well, except the fact that she's making a comeback and all. That might have some weight. I think I'm just very stubborn.

She's just won a couple of exhibition matches - against fellow Belgian Kirsten Flipkens and then against the lovely Flavia Pennetta. There has been a lot of excitement about this fact, and I totally understand why. That's worth getting excited over.

But I don't know how much you can read into it. Flipkens and Pennetta have just come off a solid year of tennis, and I think you can bet on their exhaustion. Henin is fresh. There's a distinct advantage right there. And, love of the game aside, no one - no one - can deny JuJu's talent. She's one of the biggest natural talents the game has seen in a long time. That backhand of hers... oh! what a thing of beauty!

And then she has the name factor as well, because hello, she's JuJu! These are all contributing factors to her exhibition success.

All this said, these are still big wins for her and I do actually now believe she's back for good and stuff. But I'm reserving judgment on her comeback until I see her play in Australia, in proper competition. Then we'll see what JuJu is really made of.