Spectator wrote:

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The fact that Mr Krajan comes across quite so defensively does not advance his cause. Ms Robson had not critiqued him in public; there was no need for him to critique her. He simply comes across as insecure and not a little domineering; that may not be the reality, but it is the impression.

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 I agree.

 

I also think it's interesting that he;s coached Safina, Cibulkova, Jankovic (for a short while) and Robson. All women. None has a good word to say about him.

Korriban's point (NB liked the 'grumpy old git' tag) about coaching women is an intersting one.

There's been a lot of research and studies from the tennis think-tanks in Europe about the best methods for coaching girls. It obviously doesn'y apply to everyone and not everybody buys off on it but I've seen it being implemented and the results are very interesting.

It's a thread in its own right really but, net net, I do think that some trainers/some methods are suited to girls and women, it's not surprising, and that Mr. Krajan obviously isn't !

marina & cara set to play roland garros together- heather currently partnerless

If it looked like Laura was struggling on second serve against Ivanovic, at least she did a lot better than Kerber who won a grand total of 3 second serve points today as Ivanovic won fairly comprehensively 6-2 6-1.

OK. Robson v Ivanovic. What a gripping match and one that could easily have gone the other way.

There has obviously been a great deal of conjecture with regard to the Robson serve. She started with 2 DFs in the first game and was broken, at which time I was fearing the worst. I have to say however, that in my opinion, the serve held up pretty well until it came under pressure at the back end of the 3rd set, when most of the remaining DFs seemed to occur.

I had the feeling all the way through that if Laura could get into the rally, she was a 70/30 chance of winning the point. She had the better weight of shot and her backhand cross court regularly forced Ivanovic onto the defensive wide on the forehand side. Laura had a better variety of ground stroke and bigger weapons in my opinion.

Consequently, Ivanovic was forced into trying to keep the rallies short and regularly "went for broke" against Laura's 2nd serve. It was a tactic that paid great dividends particularly at the back end of the 3rd set. Ivanovic herself, served more aces than Laura, but how I will never know. Her ball toss was quite literally all over the place. She constantly stalled on the serve after throwing the ball up, but on other occasions, I was thinking "how is she going to reach that" and she still served an ace.

As a group, we shouted as loud as we could for Laura - anyone on this board hear "Let's go Laura, let's go" ? That would have been us - although as "ringleader" I wish to remain anonymous.

There was a nice moment at the end of the game for me. Behind us was a Serbian with whom I had a shouting match - not at each other - simply who could shout the loudest in support of "their" player. At 6-6 in the 3rd set as the match entered the deciding tie break, I decided to go and shake his hand, hoping he would understand the gesture - or my Spanish. Turns out he spoke excellent English and admitted he was actually a big Laura fan, but that Ivanovic was his favourite player.

So in general, I though Laura played a great match. She certainly seemed relaxed on the practise court beforehand and I got a good photo. I would speculate that the decision with regard to her coach has been weighing on her mind heavily over the last few weeks and may go some way as to explaining her recent form. Let's hope she can now relax more and push on up the rankings.