Vaidisova risks being a lost talent

Tennis player wins first-round match is rarely a reason for much celebration - unless your name happens to be Nicole Vaidisova.

Few players have made such an impact so young as the tall Czech, but even fewer have dropped off the radar in such a spectacular way.

At the age of 18, Vaidisova had reached two grand slam semi-finals and two quarter-finals and risen to number seven in the world rankings.

Swiftly labelled the new Maria Sharapova, the striking 6ft blonde seemed destined for major honours at the very top of the game.

But only two years later she is mired in one of the game's most astonishing slumps and surely wondering just how it could have gone so wrong.

Incredibly, Vaidisova's 6-4 6-2 triumph over Laura Granville in Memphis this week was the first WTA Tour match she had won since a first-round victory in Barcelona fully 10 months ago.

And, with her ranking now down at 177, she had to rely on a generous wild card simply to get a taste of main tour action.

Since that Barcelona victory, Vaidisova has won only four matches of any kind, two in qualifying and two on the lower-level ITF tour.

She lost in the first round at the first three grand slams of 2009 and then lost her opening qualifier at the US Open - the first time she had been absent from the main draw of a major since 2004.

The details of her fall from grace are there for all to see but the reasons behind it are altogether more baffling.

Popular belief would identify the turning point as the start of Vaidisova's relationship with ATP Tour player Radek Stepanek - a fellow Czech who was previously engaged to Martina Hingis.

There certainly might be some truth in it in that the teenager's focus may have wavered from tennis, followed by a crisis of confidence when results took a turn for the worse.

The player herself, though, blames a lingering right wrist injury, which first affected her in 2007 - the same year she struggled to overcome a bout of glandular fever - and caused her to take three months off at the end of last year.

"For the most part now, I have it under control," said the 20-year-old. "I'm happy about that. It's always hard when you have to worry about your wrist, or your health."

Time is still on Vaidisova's side, of course, but it will be a long road back, particularly for a player who sailed into the top 100 when she was only 15.

She ended last season by swapping coaches, replacing her stepfather, Ales Kodat, with Eric van Harpen, who has previously worked with Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, Conchita Martinez, Anna Kournikova and Patty Schnyder.

That indicates she is still hoping to reverse her slide, and the victory over Granville was a step in the right direction - even if it was swiftly followed by defeat against Kaia Kanepi in round two.

Vaidisova said: "I haven't been playing much this year yet. I've been trying to practice and work out and get back into things. I'm going to try and play indoors and see how it goes."

It is certain to get worse before it gets better, with Vaidisova set to drop outside the top 200 in the next month, but there surely must be signs of improvement soon after that if the Czech is not to become one of tennis' great lost talents.