Article written by Gerhard Grundhammer

For the third time this year Jelena teams up with her best friend on the tour: Nadja Petorova At the moment they claim position no 12 in the championsrace for teams with 254 points out of 2 tournaments, but unlike last year only the 4 best teams will qualify for the season ending championships. After their successful last week Dokic remains on position no13 whilst Petrova moved up to 14, at the worlds doubles rankings.

Though they have a tough opening match where they face Eleni Daniilidou and Alexandra Stevenson who got a wildcard from the organizers, they draw seems to be quite promising for our girls.

The first and only big hurdle on the way to the final should be second seeds Black/Likhovtseva, whom they should meet in the quarterfinal.

To me the top-half of the draw looks definaltely stronger as our girls could meet 7th seeds and one of the most experienced doubles on the tour Davenport/Raymond, 3rd seeds and the worlds leading double team in 2003 Clijsters/Sugiyama or top seeds and the most successful doubles players of the past 12 months Pascual/Suarez in the final!

prediction:

1st round:    Dokic/Petrova beat Daniliidou/Stevenson(WC) in 3 sets
2nd round:    Dokic/Petrova beat Farina/Garbin in 2 sets
Quarterfinal: Dokic/Petrova beat Black/Likhovtseva(2) in 3 sets
Semifinal:    Dokic/Petrova beat Bovina/Stubbs(4) in 2 sets
Final:        Clijsters/Sugiyama(3) beat Dokic/Petrova in 2 sets