After Elena Dementieva had won the silber medal at the olympic games at Sydney, and reached the semis of the US Open in 2000, people were surely expecting her to have her big breakthrough in 2001, but it did not happen
that year, and neither in 2002.

She profed to be a steady top20 player, but never won a singles tournament, and it seems as the 22 year old girl from Moscow, doesnt like to play at big occasions. The bigger the stadiums are getting where she plays at, the more spectators are watching her, and the more journalists and tv-cameras turn up at her matches, the more nervous she gets.

But Elena is pretty consistant! Winning a tourny would surely give her a huge push in the rankings, as she has steady results all over the year. She hardly looses to player outside the top20, but unfortunately the matches where she beats a top player are even more rare. Elena has a match record of 9 wins and 9 losses this year and all her wins happened to players ranked below, and 6 of those 9 losses happened to players ranked above her!

And that was not much different last year: V. Williams, Dokic (2 times), Henin-Hardenne (3 times), Suarez, Pistolesi, C. Martinez, Daniliidou and Hantuchova (2 times) sounds actually like a list of the who is who in tennis, but its the list of players who beat the tall russian (1.82 meters) in 2002, whilst Myskina and Hingis are the only  famous names of the list of players, who lost to Dementieva.

Elena Dementieva and Jelena Dokic know eachother very well. They have played eight times before, and Jelena leads the series 6-2! The russian no 3 won the first two matches, both held in the year 2000, but after that the yougoslavian no 1 had a 6-0 winning streak! The most important matches of the two blondes were held at Sydney at the Olympic Games where Elena won the semis, and at Moscow 2001 where Jelena won the final!

The russian no 21 of the world has a great return, probably one of the best amongst all girls on the tour, but certainly neither the weapons nor the mental strengh to beat Jelena and she is probably the best of all possible
opponents for Jelena to gain back some confidence.... if Jelena doesnt manage to beat herself again....