Venus Loses Nailbiter to Jankovic

Argh! Venus Williams just lost an incredibly close clay court match against Jelena Jankovic at the semifinals of the Tier 1 Family Circle Cup Championships at Charleston, South Carolina 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(5).

Venus won the first set after coming back from down a break at 2-3 and won 5 games in a row to take the first set and the first game of the second set. Then a rash of double faults started to rain from her racquet and the string of games won against the server continued. At 3-2 Venus started serving a bit better, getting to 30-0 but then got broken again. Jankokic finally held serve for the first time in five tries to take the lead 4-3 and thanks to more double faults was able to break Venus again and easily serve out the second set 6-3.

The third set was also very close, until Venus double faulted on break point at 3-3 to go down 4-3. However she broke back at love and the inevitable tie break decided the match. After going up 2-1 in the tiebreak with a mini-break Venus inexplicably lost her next two service points on unforced errors and was down a mini-break 2-3. Players changed ends at Jankovic serving 4-2 and Venus, appearing angry hit a service return winner and hit two good first serves to go eventually be up 4-5. Despite playing a good point, she lost it and the score was tied 5-5. On match point, 5-6 (Venus serving) the players played an incredibly long point with many rallies which ended with a Jankovic down the line which BARELY touched the line, requiring the umpire to come down from her chair and make the call that would decide the match. She called it good (I agree) and the match was over.