Ivanisevic Falls at First Hurdle

For Goran Ivanisevic, equipped with one of the hardest serves in tennis, the problem is not in his game but rather in his head and in his heart.

Ivanisevic continuously challenges the radar guns with rocket serves that zoom across the net for aces. And they get him nowhere.

In Monday’s opening round at the U.S. Open, the world’s fourth-ranked player blitzed 24 aces past Dinu Pescariu of Romania. And when he was finished, Ivanisevic was gone, bounced out of the season’s final Grand Slam, 6-4, 5-7, 1-6, 6-7 (3-7).

He was suitably distressed.

“He is a good player,” Ivanisevic said, trying to be kind. “But no way I can lose to him if I play normal tennis.”

He has not done that for a while and he knows it.

After a promising start at the Australian Open, where he reached the quarterfinals, Ivanisevic washed out in the first round of the French Open. He set a record with 46 aces at Wimbledon and lost in the second round. Then came Monday’s disappointment.

It has left him with serious questions, especially when he looks around and sees contemporaries such as Boris Becker and Michael Stich retiring and Stefan Edberg leaving the game a year ago.

“It is a question inside me,” said Ivanisevic, who will turn 26 next month. “I have been on the tour 10 years. Sometimes you lose that hunger for tennis. You’re dead inside. You are there, but you’re not 100 percent there. Everybody knows how to play. It doesn’t matter if you’re ranked No. 1 or No. 101. If you’re not there that day, they’re going to take the chance and beat you.”

It was obvious to him that he was in trouble against an ambitious young player with nothing to lose. Throughout the match, Pescariu’s first-serve percentage was solid. Only once in the four sets did Ivanisevic put more than half of his first serves in play.

“It was not only my serve,” he said. “It was all my game, I’m not there. You cannot win matches when you play like that.”

And, Ivanisevic said, this has been going on for a while, about four months.

“Everybody goes through tough times,” he said. “I am ranked No. 4, but I’m playing like I’m ranked No. 50 or 100. When you go on the court like that, you can expect to lose against a guy like him.”

The problem, he said, is in his mind. He went through much the same thing two years ago when he was a first-round loser at Australia, the French Open and the U.S. Open.

“It’s not a question of matches. It’s not a question of practice. I am trying hard but it just comes a time when I’m not hungry 100 percent. I’m playing the tennis. I play because I am here, not because I want to play.

“It’s not easy. It’s very frustrating when you lose in the first round. It’s terrible. It hurts a lot.

“You have to go through these times. Some days you want to win so badly, then you cannot win.”

And then you wonder why that is and when it will change again.”