Jelena Jankovic Chooses Honesty Over Sportsmanship

Your biggest upset of this year's Wimbledon is probably sixth-seeded Jelena Jankovic dropping her third-round match to unheralded American Melanie Oudin, 6-7 (10-8), 7-5, 6-2. If something seems awry with that result, well yes, there's a reason:

The sixth-seeded Jankovic struggled with the heat on a sunny, 82-degree afternoon, and took a 12-minute break after the first set. She also needed treatment for her left foot later, and was plagued by erratic groundstrokes while Oudin played with poise down the stretch and swept the final three games.

When asked about the loss, Jankovic reacted with a candor not normally seen from someone who just got upset, giving the 17-year-old nothing but insults and backhanded compliments:

"From what I have seen, she can play if you let her play," said Serbian Jankovic.

"But she cannot hurt you with anything. She doesn't have any weapons, from what I've seen.

"She's a consistent and quite solid player. She doesn't make so many mistakes. But she doesn't do anything either, so it's like she's depending kind of on you."

Oof. The thing of it is, Jankovic's probably telling the truth, even though that's hardly a gracious way to behave after a loss. After all, Jankovic only registered 13 winners on the entire match, indicating that her game wasn't exactly "there." Oudin had never beaten a top-10 opponent before and didn't appear especially dominant. Everything Jankovic said is probably right.

That said, c'mon, you have to give a victorious opponent a little more credit than essentially saying, "she's waiting for you to beat her." As a general rule, if you're to be taken at your word that someone who beats you isn't very good... what does it say about how good you are?

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.