Little Ana's free fall

After her 6-2, 6-4 loss to the emerging Anastasija Sevastova of Latvia in her opening match at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells on Saturday night, Ana Ivanovic was escorted away from Court 3 by a lone security person.

Exiting right behind her as she climbed the steps from the sunken court, I noticed something seemingly insignificant – a little “Ana” embossed on the side of the heel of her adidas tennis shoe.

It is a touch reserved for elite stars and somehow reinforces how far she has fallen since a little less than two years ago when she won the French Open and, soon after, ascended to the WTA Tour’s No. 1 ranking.

A thumb injury later in the summer of ’08, and a lingering shoulder ailment,haveled to a gradual decline that has been accelerated of late, and sees her No. 28 ranking about to fall out of the top-50 following the Indian Wells event.

On Saturday, she went through another mystifying performance when, by turns, she hit her powerful ground strokes with force and purpose, or just plain bungled them badly. In this reporter’s notebook, the following phrases appeared after she missed shots – “collapse swing forehand volley into net,” “total collapse backhand net,” “total flinch backhand long,” “miss-timed backhand unforced error weak net,” “total botch low backhand,” and “long rally -feeble forehand collapse unforced error net.”

Ivanovic has been struggling with her serve, particularly her toss, but on Saturday in the very first game, she made a perfect 11 first serves in a row, and 14 of 16 with no double faults in a long game that she still wound up losing when she made a “total miss-hit forehand net.” The serve was really not the problem, but it did get shakier after that first game.

She was clearly devastated by the loss, particularly because it was her first match since hooking up with new coach Heinz Gunthardt (Steffi Graf’s long-time mentor) a few weeks ago.

As she struggled to move through a crowd of adoring fans thrusting objects to autograph toward her, she obliged as best she could and, despite some uncomfortable jostling, signed at least 25 as she made her way through to the sanctuary of a fitness room below the Stadium Court.

There, for more than 10 minutes, she sat slumped over and talked to Gunthardt who stood right in front of her. Part way through, her mother entered, walking behind without touching Ana with any kind of a consoling gesture. She just sat down nearby, apparently not wanting to interrupt her daughter’s discourse with her new coach.

After finishing with Gunthardt, her trainer worked with her for more than five minutes, helping her stretch her legs and torso.

She then went directly to her media conference and again, as after losing to Gisela Dulko at the 2010 Australian Open, Kateryna Bondarenko at the 2009 US Open and to too many others recently, had to try to put words to what is happening to her. Not surprisingly, it looked like she might have been crying.

She gave a sort of generic explanation of the roots of her problems, saying, “I think at first it came because I just didn’t have enough practice, and I sort of felt like ... it was injuries. It was kind of Catch22, so I didn’t feel confident enough to play... or like ready enough to play. And then I would play and then I lost, and so then obviously confidence goes. So it kind of was on a roll.”

About the relationship with Gunthardt, she said, “We are actually working a lot on hitting lots of balls and getting– obviously now with the loss of confidence that I had, I got very stiff. I was like pulling up on a lot of shots and just not committing enough. I wasn’t striking the ball through and as well as I did in the past.”

She then talked about what Gunthardt had said to her during their post-match interaction in the fitness room. “I spoke to Heinz. He had said it’s not going to happen overnight. You know, I kind of felt really good over past few weeks, and in NewYork – an exhibition at Madison Square Garden on March 1 when she lost a 7-6(2) set to Kim Clijsters – I played really well. So I was very excited about that. So it’s kind of hard.”

Needless to say, the one thing that is not in short supply for Ivanovic is advice. “More than you can imagine,” she said about all the fix-it theories she has been offered. “I know it’s a lot of people, you know, just want to have best interest in how I play.

“I like to sort of take everything deep and analyzing, thinking, you know, maybe there is something right in that. But it all became too much.”

Earlier on Saturday, her former coach Sven Groeneveld (and still and advisor in his role as a consultant to adidas players) was saying how difficult it is to coach young women with all the growing up and emotional development they must go through as professional athletes.

Just looking around these days, Ivanovic, 22, has lots of company in terms of players who have completely lost the plotafter showing a lot of early promise. Nicole Vaidisova, 20, was No. 7 in the world in 2007 but is now No. 177. Anna Chakvetadze, a crafty Russian, 23, who rose to No. 5 in 2007, is now No. 70. Even Canada’s Aleksandra Wozniak, 22, is ranked No. 35 after being as high as No. 21. She is in a slump and could hardly keep a ball in play during a 6-1, 6-2 loss to journeywoman Kirsten Flipkins of Belgium last Friday in Indian Wells.

A year or so ago, after a coach had worked with the unravelling Vaidisova for a while, it was suggested to him that maybe she should just go out and get really drunk. The coach smiled and shrugged, basically indicating that might be as good a solution as any to fathomless fall of his former player.

“Next tournament Ana,” one of Ivanovic’s fans called out to her as she left Court 3 on Saturday night.

She can only hope.