Mauresmo bereft of firepower

TENNIS Wimbledon Championships:Too often frustration and grievance are the emotions that accompany Amelie Mauresmo back to the locker-room after a Grand Slam defeat.

The defending champion seems always to leave the draw too tamely for the amount of tennis body armour she carries, the number of offensive weapons at her racquet's disposal. But her capitulations are sometimes all too serene for a champion, and her departure from Centre Court yesterday was again to a chorus of groans.

Mauresmo has never done rage very well. She has never haemorrhaged distain or bile, never fallen spitting blood and spleen on the grass. Defeat for last year's Australian Open and Wimbledon champion has always seemed a closer friend than is healthy.

On another nightmare day in London, the 27-year-old fell in three sets to Nicole Vaidisova, her 13th and 14th double faults in her last service game and a missed drop-shot handing the 17-year-old a chance to serve for the match.

Vaidisova is from the Nick Bollettieri school of rip-the-opponent's-heart-out tennis. She took her chance, Mauresmo hitting a ball skyward in response to this year's Wimbledon slipping away as bright sunshine gave way to clouds.

But Mauresmo needed fire earlier than the last game, one the six-foot-plus power hitter Vaidisova finished as rain fell for the fourth time. Her back-of-the-court play was simply too big for Mauresmo, who spent much of the 142 minutes searching for her more familiar game of verve and touch while trying to fend off the aggressive tyro.

Mauresmo's second serve was savaged and her demise was compounded by too many unforced errors and double faults, particularly in the final set. It was a miscellany of problems that had the normally cultured Frenchwoman peppering Centre Court with cries of "Merde!"

Her total of 37 missed shots was disfiguring, and while Vaidisova was not far behind with 31, the teenager hit more outright winners, while Mauresmo hit fewer. Vaidisova's serving was also tighter and as she kept her head on what was an unfamiliar surface Mauresmo incrementally lost hers.

"Everything went wrong today," said the 2006 champion. "The serve was definitely not working. I think I had some ups and downs through the first week. It showed a little bit more today. Probably confidence - I'm struggling to get the confidence back. It's definitely a struggle for me right now."

The Czech had come into the competition with some form. She was a semi-finalist in the Australian Open and a quarter-finalist at Roland Garros. And her heavy groundstroke game reflected the formative years spent on clay.

Serve was exchanged six times in the opening set as it spiralled toward a tiebreak, a forehand mishit from Mauresmo handing set point to Vaidisova with serve.

Another wide crosscourt forehand followed, and Vaidisova quietly thanking Mauresmo for her Gallic largesse.

The second set hinged on just one service break, Vaidisova dropping hers in the fifth game and Mauresmo holding out to level the match.

Some hope for the defending champion was carried into the third set but her game was freighted with miscalculations and a strange diffidence.

Vaidisova sensed it. Three straight games for 3-0, then one for Mauresmo and another three for 6-1, Mauresmo defensively batting a serve, not down the tramlines but into the high side of the net at match point.

"This is a surface that suits her a lot so I knew if I wanted to win I had to get on the same level and play as good as she does on it," explained the winner.

Vaidisova will also apply that logic to her quarter-final opponent, Ana Ivanovic, the French Open finalist who beat Nadia Petrova in three sets, 6-1, 2-6, 6-4.

The meeting of the 17-year-old and the 19-year-old means we are ensured a teenage semi-finalist.

Seeded six to Vaidisova's 14, the Serb will go into the match full of the confidence any player of her age who had been to a Grand Slam final would hold.

It won't be a game for the fainthearted or the grass purists. We can expect plenty of sonic booms off the groundstrokes. The baseline is their friend; the net could bring on palpitations.

"Even before I came people were telling me that I'm going to do well here," said Ivanovic cheerily. "They were like, 'you have such a powerful game. You have a good serve.' I was like, 'okay if you say so', I'll try. It's a different kind of tennis, faster, which I enjoy."

Also through is Svetlana Kuznetsova. The braided Russian sent the 16-year-old Tamira Paszek packing in straight sets in a match too far for the exciting youngster.