Dementieva Rolls into Quarterfinals

Many fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium Sunday evening probably took their seats for the women’s fourth-round match between Olympic gold medalist Elena Dementieva of Russia and 26-year-old Li Na of China without having a clear allegiance to any particular player, but they did know that they wanted to see an exciting tennis match and cheered for long rallies and intricate points. Unfortunately, they didn’t see too many of those in this relatively one-sided match in which Dementieva rolled over Li 6-4, 6-1.
 

No. 5 player in the world Dementieva has had a terrific year, making it to the quarterfinals of Roland Garros, the semifinals of Wimbledon, and of course earned the gold medal in Beijing just a couple of eeks ago. She has traditionally played well in her nine years of participating here at the Open, earning a spot in the semifinals twice, the quarterfinals once and was a runner up in 2004.
 
Dementieva and Li were even in their series against each other prior to Sunday’s match, with Dementievas having beaten Li at Indian Wells in 2006 and Li taking down Dementieva in three sets at Sydney in 2007.
 
Following the match, Dementieva told the crowd that because of her loss to Li in 2007, she was nervous in the first set, which contributed to the fact that she allowed Li to break her once.
 
"I feel like the whole game I was pretty solid, maybe not my service," Dementieva said. "I struggled just a little bit, especially in my first set, but it felt much better in the second."
 
Her nerves couldn’t have been that much of a factor, however, as she took a 4-0 lead in the first set in 10 minutes, breaking Li twice and holding each of her own service gams.
 
With Dementieva up 4-0, Li went on a 3-0 run of her own, stealing a service game from Dementieva and holding her own serve twice to make the match a bit more of a contest.
 
With Dementieva serving at 5-4 to end the set, the crowd finally picked their player to root for and began to cheer loudly for Li, who was the clear underdog. Li caught Dementieva flat-footed a few times in that service game to take a 30-40 lead, but the Russian prevailed, taking the first set 6-4.
 
“Well, I had a very easy start, and then I feel like maybe I lost a little bit of my concentration. I started to play not aggressive enough, and she started to play more solid, attacking me and just pushing me harder,” Dementieva commented after the match. “So we had this little bit of fight in the first set. But, I felt like I was doing the right thing, and [we] didn't have much of a fight in the end.”
 
The second set was far more lopsided, with Dementieva winning 6-1 in 25 minutes of play.
 
Dementieva will take on No.15 seed Patty Schnyder in the quarterfinals.
 
"We played lots of times against each other through our career," Dementieva said of her upcoming quarterfinal opponent. "I think she's a very unique player, you know, lefty, first of all. It's never easy to play against her. But I've got a lot of experience playing against Patty, so hopefully it's going to help me in my next match."

 
Match Facts:

• Dementieva went 4 of 5 in her attempts to convert points at the net.
• This was Li's 11th appearance in a Grand Slam main draw.
• In 2004, Li became China's first-ever Grand Slam quarterfinalist when she reached the round of eight at Wimbledon.
• This is Dementieva's 40th career Grand Slam.