Stop and shop -- and shots

ROME -- One year ago, she came to Rome to die. Not a bad place for it.

Did she book a location in the Catacombs? Or the lovely Protestant Cemetery, where the poets Keats and Shelley are planted?

"No, no, no," says the effervescent Jelena "Jelly" Jankovic, seated in a small room at Il Foro Italico. She clarifies, meaning death as a tennis player.

"I decided I would enter here to say goodbye to the game. Rome is also the best place to go shopping."

She was so desperate and discouraged about life on the WTA Tour that she decided to go back to college in Belgrade. Better, at least, than doing a Tosca -- taking a high dive from the Castel Sant'Angelo into the River Tiber. Jankovic's ranking had taken a similar plunge, to No. 40, as she lost match after match.

However, abruptly, instead of an 11th straight defeat, "I started my comeback," she says. "I don't know why. I guess it was my destiny to get it together in Rome." She beat a good Russian, Elena Likhovtseva, and was on her way to the quarterfinals. "I lost to Venus [Williams], but I beat her a few weeks later at Wimbledon."

Destiny is working well for Jelly, the 22-year-old Belle of Belgrade with a sweet game and personality. Today, another Russian is in her way, 2004 US Open champ and third-ranked Svetlana Kuznetsova, but it's at the top, the Italian Open final. If Jankovic passes that test she'll be No. 4, and among the favorites at the forthcoming French Open.

She beat Kuznetsova at last year's US Open en route to the semis, and finished the year at No. 12. Quite a resurrection in 12 months.

Jankovic got her title shot yesterday by laboring for 69 minutes to beat Swiss lefty Patty Schnyder, 6-1, 6-3, a screwy encounter during which serves melted like gelato in the fierce sun. There were more breaks than in the old days of Boston's Charles Street Jail: 12 in 16 games.

Jankovic held four times, but Schnyder found serve as impossible to hold as an electric eel.

Kuznetsova got past No. 14 Daniela Hantuchova, 6-4, 6-2, with powerful forehands, and has a 2-1 lifetime edge on Jankovic.

Schnyder, No. 17, the eliminator of Serena Williams in the quarterfinals, couldn't duplicate that fine performance because, she says, "Every time I thought I had an opening in a corner, Jelena was there. I had a bad cold, some trouble breathing, but her movement was too good. She takes the ball very early, and that's difficult to play."

Jankovic says she had to move into her strokes quickly because her formative years were spent on fast hard courts at Nick Bollettieri's tennis camp at Bradenton, Fla., not her native clay in Belgrade. Her rip-roaring double-barreled backhand is her best stroke "because I'm a natural lefty, with a strong left arm. But when it was time to learn to write, my parents showed me righthanded and I do everything righthanded."

Since conversion from southpawing also happened to three Hall of Famers -- Ken Rosewall, Maureen Connolly, and Margaret Court -- it can't be too bad.

Jankovic says, "I tried to keep the ball on Patty's backhand. She's so terrific with spin, but she can't do as much damage from the backhand side."

A Florida homeowner for almost a decade, might Jankovic be a candidate for US citizenship? American tennis forces need some help.

Laughing again, she says, "Oh, no. In Serbia, we're doing OK, maybe better than you. Especially for such a small country which could fit in . . . where? Maybe Nick's place in Bradenton?

"We've got me and [No. 8] Ana Ivanovic. And for men, [No. 5] Novak Djokovic. This is all new. We don't have much tradition."

Jankovic remembers watching Monica Seles winning the Italian title seven years ago on TV.

"Monica -- also a Serb -- is my heroine," she says. "I couldn't even dream of winning it -- but maybe now. And little kids will be watching me. That's thrilling."

She loves the give and take of press conferences, a smart lady who promises to finish her college degree. But yesterday, she was eager to leave my interview -- to go shopping.

"I have to spend some of this money," she says. "A necklace, I think."

Could be $181,980 for winning, or a minimum of $92,410. I wished her happy glitters. Why not? Any woman will tell you Roman shopping is to die for.