
At least not until this week.
For months we watched Ana put up a fight -- she actually had several leads over Kim Clijsters at the Billie Jean King exhibition match in March and kept things close against Aggie Radwanska at two straight tournaments -- but never quite pull off the win. So when she got past Elena Vesnina in the first round in Rome on Monday, I thought it was a fluke. A straight set win over ninth seed Victoria Azarenka yesterday, I considered encouraging.

Today she won seventy percent of her first serve attempts and held Dementieva to only a third of the points in the first set. She rolled through the first half with a 6-1 win. The ladies traded breaks in the next set and ultimately forced a tiebreak, which Ana won, 7-5. After less than a hundred minutes, she's made only her second quarterfinal in the past twelve months.
Of course, by virtue of a low rank and no seeding, the road ahead will be tough. Ivanovic faces a feisty Nadia Petrova in the next round, a woman she hasn't beaten since 2007, and a third straight match with Radwanska looms in the semis should she make it. Then again, in a tournament which has already seen so many casualties -- Sam Stosur withdrew, while Caroline Wozniacki, Dinara Safina and Svetlana Kuznetsova all lost early -- there's plenty of room for surprises.
And it may just be Ana's strategy to catch the whole tennis world by surprise.
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