Article sent by Gerhard Grundhammer

27 year old Rita Grande from Rivoli, Italy is Jelenas opponent, today at the Center Court of the Casina Stadium in Vienna.

The worlds no 36 seems to be a solid right-handed tennis player, who is in the top 100 for 8 straight years now (highest position was 24), and with a good sense of humor - she named her cat "Boris" after Boris Becker, because of their similar "hair-colour".

Rita has won 3 WTA-titles in her career. Two of them in 2001, Hobart and Bratislava, and one just recently at Casablance. Especially at Hobart she played the tennis of her life, eliminating Pistolezi and Frazier and beating Jennifer Hopkins in the final, though she lost the first set 0-6!

At Grand Slam tournaments she is not that successful. She never reached a quarterfinal of any Slam, but has a few good results. One of those was last year at the Australian Open, where she lost to Jennifer Capriati in round 4 3-6 and 6-7(9!). What a match that must have been. The match lasted more than 1 1/2 hours, and the two girls played 172 points! The nowdays Italian no3 hit 22 winners and 33 unforced errors. Rita had 50 (fifty) net approaches at that match, and 27 of them were successfull! She had 4 aces and only 2 double faults, but her second double fault was at 9-10 in the second set tie-breaker and decided the match. Quite funny, that both players were so exhausted at that tie-break that they forgot to change sites after 9-9! Asked about that incident in the post match interview she said: "I only tried to catch some air, and did not even know the score..."

2003 seems to become the worst year for quite a while now for the Naples born girl. The Australian Open were the third tournament she entered and only there she managed to win her first match, but lost in round 2 to Bovina. After 6 further disappointing tournaments she beat as famous players as Camerin, Marrero and Serra Zanetti to capture the title of Casablanca only to loose the next 4 opening rounds of more famous tournaments as Madrid or Rome, again. Roland Garros could have been the tourning point this season for Rita. She defeated Cargill in 2 sets, took revenge with Bovina for her loss to her at down under and gave Maleeva at least a tough fight in round three.

Jelena leads the 1.77 meters (5`10") tall girl 4-1 but they have played only one of those fife matches in the last three years. Their first meeting was in 1999 at Birmingham, and Rita Grande won 2-6, 6-3 and 9-7!!! In 2000 they faced eachother three times and Jelena won all three of those matches at Amelia Island, Shanghai and at the Olympic Games.

Their last meeting happened last August where both players did not even know the meaning of the word "crysis". Grande had just beaten Molik, Maleeva and Srebotnik (who eliminated Kim Clijsters in the previous round), but Jelena was on her run to become the no4 of the world and gave Rita more or less rather a tennis lection as she beat her 6-2 and 6-1.

Like the godness herself i lost pretty much all my convidence into her game, but Jelena had at least beaten all players this year who were in a crysis, too, and so i guess you can look forward for a quarterfinal preview on Jelena-Dokic.com, as the winner of this match will face either Wartusch or
Suarez.