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For the first time this season, Jelena has won consecutive matches and what a tournament to do it in as the Nasdaq-100 Open is the 6^th largest tournament of the year, behind all four grand slams and the season-ending championships. Earlier today, she roared past the 21^st seed Nathalie Dechy in straight sets, prevailing 6-3 6-2. Next up she faces a very challenging opponent in Australian Alicia Molik.

Both players have performed particularly well during this tournament as their results have shown. Prior to her 2^nd round encounter, Dokic was in very poor form having lost many matches over the past two months to lower-ranked players. It was here in Miami though in which she was able to defeat Russian sensation Kuznetsova in straight sets, which was quite an accomplishment considering she was possibly the hardest second round opponent any seed could face. Then she was able to beat red-hot Dechy in straight sets, another good victory for her.

Molik too has had a very successful comeback from an injury sustained during the Australian Open. Although she did lose in a challenger event prior to this tournament, she came back in devastating fashion when she defeated former top-ten player, Austrian Barbara Schett. In her second round encounter with Slovakian Daniela Hantuchova, little did people know that Molik would pull off the upset of the tournament. Down 6-2 5-2 and two match points, she fought back to win the next eleven games and subsequently the match to produce an outstanding 2-6 7-5 6-0 result. It is with this fighting quality that Molik has been able to stretch many other top players over the past two years, including Monica Seles and Silvia Farina Elia.

A few weeks ago, Dokic fans were still concerned that Jelena’s slump would be ever-growing as she adjusted to a new coach and a more consistent game. Now, it seems, it is finally paying off. Dokic’s first serve percentages were right up in the 60s against Dechy where she hit 5 aces and won 78% of those points where her first serves were in. More importantly, her winners compared to her errors were nearly identical and this can be attributed to her more consistent game and the fact that she is now coming to the net more often and winning a large proportion of those points demonstrates the variety that is coming into her game. This play could be very dangerous against Molik.

In Molik’s case, on the other hand, because she was on an outside court, they did not provide winners/unforced errors. However, other stats that they did provide related mainly to her serve:

1st Serve %	63%
Aces	1
Double Faults	0
Winning % - 1st Serve Pts.	26 of 40 = 65%
Winning % - 2nd Serve Pts.	16 of 23 = 70%

As is evident, Molik has a really strong serve that can gain her a lot of free points, especially off her second serve. As she can hit with a lot of variety on her serve, Dokic should be on the guard constantly and not go for the winner straight off but rather get the ball in play where she can then try and win the point with her strong groundstrokes. Another tactic Jelena should try is to push the ball deep into Molik’s backhand side as Alicia will often go for a topspin shot off these that usually lead to a miss-hit or an unforced error. Either way, Jelena could gain a lot of free points with this style of play but should be very aware of Molik’s newfound confidence that can allow her to hit her shots with perfect placement and can thus lead to unforced errors on Jelena’s part.

2 Birmingham June 17 2001

A Molik - J Dokic (2)

4-6 6-3 6-3

This match was played a couple of years ago and was on grass. Normally you should not consider such a meeting when determining who could win a future meeting on a hard court. However, grass is Dokic’s best surface and because Molik beat her on this surface, she should be very well aware of Alicia’s style of play and how dangerous opponent she could be, especially since Molik is at an all time high with her first career title coming at Hobart this year and a win/loss record of 8-3 this year, including non-WTA events.