Melanie Oudin is probably not going to win Wimbledon. Let’s get that right out of the way for the benefit of everyone, including the pixie-like 20-year-old who knows all about causing a sensation — and also about paying the price for the privilege.

In 2009, the native of Marietta, Ga., held the hearts of her fellow Americans in her hand as she upset four consecutive Russians, including an Olympic singles gold medal winner (Elena Dementieva) and Grand Slam champion and current No. 1 Maria Sharapova, on an enchanted march to the quarterfinals. She ran out of Russians, though, and lost to another woman destined to become No. 1, Caroline Wozniacki.

The blonde, blue-eyed, 5-foot-6 Oudin was a supernova, but she was sucked into the black hole of fame almost as quickly as she arrived at it. Ranked No. 70 at that U.S. Open that year, Oudin slumped after her star turn, and by the start of the Charlottesville, Va., ITF event this spring, she was down to No. 370. That’s where Oudin took her first halting steps on a comeback that has her playing Jelena Jankovic — another former No. 1 — for the title in Birmingham.

Some gung-ho tennis fans will scoff at this news and ask, “So what? Oudin is 5-foot-6, and her serve is a puffball. She was just a flash in the pan and won’t ever duplicate what she did in 2009.”

So what? The more compelling reality is that Oudin has fought a long, protracted battle with doubt, frustration and the demands of maturity, and she finally appears to be getting the upper hand. If her story has no gravitational pull for you, your heart is just a pump sending blood to your extremities.

According to Oudin, she hit her low point just after Wimbledon last year. She still had a respectable ranking at No. 87, but she struggled through Europe for two months and got just one game off Ana Ivanovic in a first-round loss at the All England Club. She realized she needed a break and took a few weeks off. When she came back, she lost her first match in five consecutive events.

“I was really ready to come back and do better,” she told me when I visited with her recently. “But it didn’t work. That was hard. I came back and I was just so tight again.”

Notice her use of the words “tight” and “again.” Say what you will about her game, her biggest and most conspicuous problem has been fear. Tightness. The inability to swing freely, easily and with confidence. Most tennis players have been there, and they can tell you it’s a bad place to visit, especially for an extended period.

The one good thing that came out of that skid was that she finally split with her coach since Oudin was 9, Brian de Villiers. He was the figure in the regrettably public, unpleasant divorce of Oudin’s parents. You want to play Sigmund Freud, feel free.

Oudin eventually made her way to the USTA development program and, after an unsatisfying stint at the Boca Raton, Fla., training center, she moved to New York to work under Patrick McEnroe’s staff. The consensus was that Oudin was out of shape.

“I’ve always loved playing tennis, win or lose,” she told me. “But losing took my confidence. Pretty much all of it. And then I just wasn’t so excited to go and do tennis, do fitness, all the things you need.”

By spring, her fitness was much improved, and she was cracking her forehand again. She adjusted to life in New York (she lives with a family in the upscale suburb of Pound Ridge). In late April, she earned a wild card into the French Open (the U.S. and France have a reciprocity agreement) with her showing in two ITF events, and she’s been showing flashes of her best game ever since. She’s won some very close matches since, including a pair of three-setters that carried her to the Birmingham final. Those were critical, confidence-boosting wins, finishing a six-match run that started in qualifying.

“I feel my confidence building with each one (match),” Oudin told WTA publicists in Birmingham. “I’ve always loved playing on grass. I think my forehand is one of my biggest weapons, and since I hit it so flat it goes through the court a lot on grass. Then I can slice my backhand and hit drop shots, too, so I’ve always thought grass suits my game really well. I feel like I’m showing top-50 tennis again. I hope to get back up there.”

Nobody is going to mistake this run for the one Oudin put together in 2009, and she’s only beaten two Russians (Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina, neither of whom has ever been mistaken for Dementieva or Sharapova). Somehow, I get the feeling none of that matters to Oudin.

American Melanie Oudin claimed her first WTA title with a straight-set win over Jelena Jankovic of Serbia in Monday’s rain-delayed final at the Aegon Classic.

Rain plagued the Wimbledon tune-up all week and forced a Monday finish, which went to Oudin in a 6-4, 6-2 decision. It was also her first-ever WTA final.

Oudin, currently ranked 208th, first had to qualify for the main draw and won six matches to capture the title. She had played only five WTA main-draw matches all year, winning just one, entering the tournament.

That lone victory came in the first round of the French Open. She was then beaten by eventual Roland Garros runner-up Sara Errani in the second round.

Oudin, though, has now beaten Jankovic twice in as many meetings. The first win came in the third round at Wimbledon in 2009. It also served as a coming out party for the then-17-year-old Oudin, who went on to lose to Agnieszka Radwanska in the fourth round at the All England Club, but reached the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open later that summer.

After two unheralded seasons that included one semifinal appearance in 2010 and one quarterfinal result in 2011, Oudin spent most of this year on the ITF circuit. She did have a pair of first-round losses in WTA events in Memphis and Charleston, then won an ITF title in Charlottesville.

Jankovic, meanwhile, fell to 12-15 all-time in finals. The former world No. 1 hasn’t won a tournament since 2010 at Indian Wells. Her best previous results this year were a trio of semifinal appearances. She had also lost five of her previous six matches entering this tournament.

Oudin collected a first prize of $37,000.

BIRMINGHAM, England — Winning two matches in one day and being awarded a Wimbledon main draw wild card? Not a bad day’s work for Melanie Oudin.

After a week of rain at the AEGON Classic pushed the completion of the women’s quarterfinals to Sunday, Oudin, now ranked No. 208, finished her suspended match by beating fellow American Irina Falconi 6-4, 5-7, 7-5 to make her first WTA Tour semifinal since Paris 2010. She was back on court two hours later to contest that semifinal against Ekaterina Makarova, who beat Serena Williams at the Australian Open. Not a problem for Oudin, who beat the Russian 6-4, 2-6, 6-2 to advance to her first career WTA final, where she’ll face former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic on Monday. And to put a cherry on top of what was a career day, Oudin learned that she had been given a main draw into Wimbledon.

Jankovic herself had a full day, playing almost five full sets in the span of four hours, beating Misaki Doi in her quarterfinal 6-3, 6-4, and then surviving a tight semifinal clash against 2008 Wimbledon semifinalist Zheng Jie, 6-7 (2), 7-5, 6-1. Jankovic, who recently hired Zeljko Krajan (former coach of Dinara Safina and Dominika Cibulkova), has unveiled a noticeably more aggressive game this week, with positive results. Her serve has been more of a weapon than in the past and, quite surprisingly, the traditional baseline counterpuncher has been trying to work her way to the net.

Though her intention of approaching the net is good, it’s what happens when she’s up there that’s still a work in progress. Jankovic often found herself stuck in no-man’s land after hitting an approach shot, getting passed with regularity by Zheng. But Jelena says it’s all part of her becoming a more complete player.

“My goal is to play more offensively,” Jankovic told reporters, “to use my shots and more variety, to be kind of a complete player. To have every shot in the book but do it very well. I’m trying to do that, I improved my serve, I’m coming in, I’m striking the ball much cleaner with a faster pace, which is important. Overall I think I’m improving. That’s my goal. I have no goals when it comes to rankings. My goal is just to get my game up there.”

In their sole meeting, Oudin upset Jankovic at Wimbledon in 2009. Jankovic famously attributed the loss to “women’s problems” and made it known that she was less than impressed with Oudin’s game. ”She cannot hurt you with anything,” Jankovic said after that third-round match. “She doesn’t have any weapons, from what I’ve seen. If I felt a little bit more fresh at the end of that second set, I could have won in two sets. 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.”

Oudin obviously has different memories of that match.

“The one thing I remember about that match, someone told me right before the match that I was playing on the Graveyard Court, where the seeds had lost,” Oudin said. “I was only 17 and she was someone I looked up to. There was a chance, of course, that I thought I could win. But I knew it was going to be extremely tough. I didn’t really expect myself to win.”

Oudin says her self-belief has been building since Charleston (where she won back-to-back matches for the first time since 2010 and qualified for the main draw), and while she may have dismissed the importance of confidence before, now she’s realizing it means everything.

“The confidence is a huge thing,” she said. “As much as I didn’t think it was, it is much more. Even closing out a match. Like the first match point and you’re able to close that one, I feel like before I would completely doubt myself and worry, ‘Oh, no, I don’t know if I can even win this one.’ And now I feel really confident I really can.”

It’s a former world No.1 versus the underdog as Jelena Jankovic and Melanie Oudin prepare to go at it in the AEGON Classic 2012 women’s singles final.

The final, which takes place at 11am on Monday 18th June, is the second meeting between the pair with Oudin holding a 1-0 lead in their head to head.

Their first and only previous match-up came on grass, at Wimbledon 2009, where Oudin won in the third round, on her way to the last 16.

The 20 year old American is competing in her first ever WTA final and becomes the fourth qualifier to reach a singles final on the tour this year. In all three previous occasions the qualifier went on to win the title.

Ranked at 208 in the world Oudin becomes the lowest ranked player to reach a final since the 2010 Australian Open and will bid to be the first player ranked outside the top 200 to win a title since the 2009 US Open.

In contrast, Jankovic, the world No.22 and former world No.1, is competing in her 27th WTA singles final. The Serb won in Birmingham in 2007 and regardless of the result today should return to the world’s top 20.

On the grasscourts at Wimbledon Jankovic has never been past the fourth round in the singles event but did win the mixed doubles title with Britain’s Jamie Murray in 2007, just after winning the singles title at Edgbaston.