Article written by Conchita Slice

Well as the tennis season for 2002 has concluded, Jelena has had quite an unusual year as far as success is concerned although she has still firmly maintained her position as a strong top10 player, considering she reached a career high of number 4 in the world earlier this year. The world, however, may be oblivious to the fact that although the season-ending Sanex Championships has been played, many exhibition matches and tournaments are still being played through to December, a prime example of this being the inaugural Collins Cup, in which the finest players of Europe take on the elite players of America.

In this tournament, Jelena will be playing 1 singles match and 1 doubles match. In her singles match, she will be playing the world number 2, Venus Williams. Jelena has played Venus five times during her career in which Venus has edged against her in their all time head-to-heads 4:1. Here is a list of all their matches that have been played:

As is evident, Venus convincingly beat Jelena in their last encounter in July of this year. However, there is cause for optimism considering Dokic nearly defeated the world number 1, Serena Williams, the sister of Venus, in their encounter in the Sanex Championships last week where she lost 7-6(1) 6-0. Only a hand full of people have been able to come close to a tiebreaker set against Serena, thus illustrating the fact that Jelena has a really good chance to upset Venus and drive the European team to victory, and considering Serena is clearly the better player than Venus, it would not come as a surprise if the “upset” occurred. If Jelena adequately rests over the next two weeks, this could very well happen as only a mental lapse ultimately resulted in the first set loss in the tiebreaker as Jelena was dominating the set 4-1 beforehand.

Nonetheless, Serena is not Venus, so the match could be considerably different.

Venus and Jelena have very similar games-power. Their first and second serves reach very high speeds and Jelena had the second fastest serve recorded at a recent tournament, behind only Jennifer Capriati. Considering Jelena’s percentage wins on 1^st and 2^nd serves in recent tournaments, she has an excellent chance to capitalize on short balls from the world number 2. However, if her serve fails to work and Venus is able to take advantage of unforced errors by the Yugoslav, then there is an extremely high chance that the score line will be similar to their last encounter.

As far as doubles is concerned, Jelena has had excellent performances in tournaments over the past two months where she reached numerous finals with her new doubles partner, Nadia Petrova of Russia. In this tournament, Jelena has been paired with the very talented Daniela Hantuchova who has surpassed Dokic in the world rankings by taking the number 8 position, one place higher than Jelena. Hantuchova has 4 Sanex WTA Doubles titles to her credit, a finalist at three other events, and a semi-finalist at seven other tournaments. She was also this year’s Austrlian Open mixed doubles winner with David Ullyett. Dokic, on the other hand, is also very experienced in doubles,  as she has been the winner of 4 Sanex WTA Doubles titles, been a finalist at five other events and a semi-finalist at eight other tournaments.

As a result of both these player’s experience, they will be a formidable force when they take on the Williams sisters, despite them being successful at this year’s Wimbledon final.