Article by Conchita Slice

Congratulations to Jelena on beating the world number 11 Anastasia Myskina of Russia, thus proving to the world that she is a serious force to be reckoned with in the end-of-year Sanex Championships. However, as this tournament only has 16 players, Jelena now moves into the Quarterfinals where she is rewarded with a match against the number 1 player in the world and defending champion, Serena Williams.

As most of you should know, Serena has literally dominated the tennis world this year by winning 8 tournament titles, including the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. She has also won the last 3 tournaments she has played in and will be a serious threat to Jelena on improving on last year’s performance at these Championships where she also reached the QF. Nonetheless, it is quite possible that Jelena could upset Serena as statistics from these matches show.

Firstly, Serena herself admitted, following her match against Israeli Anna Smashnova, "The way I played today it's not looking so good," despite her winning convincingly 6-2 6-2. She only had 48% of her serves in, although she won 85% of these points when the serve worked. However, seeing as though Jelena hits with much more power and prestige than the Israeli, these stats would be completely different if this match had taken place today! Similarly, Serena committed, for the first time in a while, more errors than winners and this could give Jelena a really good chance to capitalize on the Williams sister lack of match play.

Then there is the side of Jelena’s match statistics which were quite impressive considering her recent performances over the past month. Here is a list, taken from the site www.wtatourchampionships.com , in which Jelena had served reasonably well and performed well at the net. Then again, there is still the high numbers of unforced errors when compared to her amounts of winners, which could really harm her chances in defeating Serena.

Jelena and Serena have played each other twice, both in the year 2000 in which Serena has been victorious on both occasions. The results are shown below:

Overall, Jelena has put up a tough fight in both matches and it will be interesting to see how the power of these players match each other. If Jelena can either take advantage of double faults or unforced errors by the American, then it is highly likely that she can cause the upset and move into the Semi-Finals, where she is most likely able to play another American, Jennifer Capriati, who Jelena has recently shown that she can beat.

Prediction:

Jelena Dokic d. Serena Williams 6-3 1-6 6-3