Ana Ivanovic Enlists Darren Cahill

Struggling Serb Ana Ivanovic is now working with Darren Cahill, TennisReporters.net reports (in their sidebar). Cahill and Ivanovic will meet up the week before the Los Angeles WTA stop, which Ivanovic is playing and Cahill is commentating for ESPN2.

This is definitely a good get for Ivanovic. Her career has been in total freefall ever since she won the 2008 French Open. Ranked #1 less than a year ago, she is now outside the top 10, sitting currently at #11 (up from #13 before Wimbledon). With an errant ball toss causing her problems, as well as a seemingly complete loss of her court instincts, Ivanovic needs a big, proven name like Cahill to come in and work with her exclusively, which her Adidas-hired coach Sven Groenefeld was never able to do.

Cahill, who has previously coached Lleyton Hewitt and Andre Agassi, has not worked extensively with a WTA player previously. He's got a reputation for being a great tennis mind and a class act, which should help him communicate with Ivanovic, who seems to be completely out of ideas and weapons in many of her matches.

Ivanovic won matches back in her peak playing days by playing fairly level, consistent tennis that was driven by aggression and decent movement. After she won her slam the self-doubt came (would seem an odd time for it), and her results tanked. She hasn't made the quarterfinals of a slam in her five slams after winning the 2008 French Open, a letdown that has taken her almost completely out of the conversation about the elites in women's tennis.

She doesn't have many points to defend in this second half of the season until Linz which she won at the end of 2008 in sort of a fluke patch of good form. With Venus and Serena still not playing many smaller tournaments, there's a fair number of points out there for Ivanovic to pick up. There's a great opportunity here for Cahill to help Ivanovic get back into the top 10, and possibly even into the Year-End Championships. Whether or not he'll be able to help the struggling Serb is yet to be seen, but it least it shows she's still trying.

Tuesday's Slices--7/7/09

Four things that happened today in the world of tennis that you may have missed:

1. Still struggling to recover from a shoulder injury that had him out for well over a year, American Taylor Dent took a nice step toward regaining his old form by securing a relatively routine 6-2, 6-1 win over Brazilian Marcos Daniel in Newport. The grass at Newport should help Dent's serve-and-volley game immensely, hopefully giving him the springboard he needs to get back into the top 200. The previous time Dent won a match in the main draw of an ATP tournament was way back in April. His opponent in that match? Marcos Daniel. When you got 'em, you got 'em.
2. The top two ranked Italians on the WTA Tour, Flavia Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone, met today in the first round of the hard court tournament in Bastad, Sweden. The #3 seed Pennetta beat recent Wimbledon quarterfinalist Schiavone 6-2, 7-5. It's an unfortunate draw for both in an otherwise soft first round. I cannot fathom why Pennetta came to Bastad this week in the first place, when there was a perfectly good obscure clay court tournament in Budapest to be played. No one loves obscure clay court tournaments the way Flavia Pennetta does.
   
3. There is something strange going on with the seeds in Budapest. Both Sara Errani (#7) and Lucie Safarova (#8) were served a bagel by their qualifier opponents. Even stranger, Alize Cornet (#2), who can only beat the traffic of late, managed to win her match over Galina Voskoboeva. I haven't seen photos, but I'm guessing Voskoboeva was playing without the use of one or more of her legs.
   
4. Small weeks for the main tours usually mean big weeks for the challenger circuits, and this week is no exception. The men haveThe women are in a $100k in Biarritz and a $75k in Zagreb, with some pretty nice fields at each (headlined by Lucie Hradecka and Rossanna De Los Rios, respectively). Cult fan favorite Zuzana Ondraskova picked up a nice 6-2, 6-0 win in Zagreb over the third-ranked Serb, Ana Jovanovic. In Serbian women's tennis, Jovanovic is only behind Jelena Jankovic (#6) and Ana Ivanovic (#11). Jovanovic is #229. That's quite the drop-off.