Article sent by Gerhard Grundhammer

It was the 23rd of April in 1978, as Noriyuki Obato received the news that his wife Masako has given birth to a little girl, which they named Saori, not knowing that just a bit more than 25 years later, some guy in europe will sit in front of his computer, desperately trying to find some informations about their daughter. The reason for that? Saori happened to become a tennis-professional and the 1.65 meters tall girl from Tokyo, Japan, beat Tatiana Perebiynis 6-1, 7-6, second seed Laura Granville 7-6, 3-6, 6-2 and Lindsay Lee Waters 7-5 and 6-4 to proceed to the main draw of the Eastbourne 2003 tournament and will now face the hottest, most georgeous and most talented player who has ever been on the WTA-tour: Jelena Dokic!

Saori Obata has three ITF Circuit Titles under her belt, the first one coming in 1996, the year she turned Pro in Indonesia and the second in 2001 in Australia. Her latest success happened at Fukuoka, Japan, which did not only win her the main part of that $50.000 price money there, but also got her into the Top 100 for the first time in her career.

But 2003 seems to become THE year of the left handed player anyway: In January, she won three matches to qualify for the main draw at Canberra and defeated Ruano Pascual in the 1st round. In February she upset Serra Zanetti at the Indian Open and finally she beat Alexandra Stevenson at the Kroger St. Jude tournament in straight sets!
 
In 2002 she made her debut in all the three Grand Slams, her best finish being a second round at Wimbledon, winning her first Grand Slam match defeating Worlds No 29 Stevensson. She also defeated No 7 seed Gagliardi en route to the quarterfinals at Bali.

Saori prefers playing on fast courts, and attacks her opponent at every possible moment. So she had 16 net approaches vs. Harkleroad at the opening round of Roland Garros this year, which is quite a high number concidering that it was a rather short match (Harkleroad won 6-4 and 6-2), Saori is rather small and last but not least the Japanese No 3 has a discusting serve speed, hitting the ball with an average speed of only 144 km/h across the net. (Jelena had 166 km/h at the French Open).

I must admit that i have not only never seen Saori Obata playing but it was also the first time that i ever heard that name, as i looked at the schedule of the center court and found that match scheduled as 4th match of the day (first one starts at 11 am, London time) and so i cant really give a prediction, but i found one last interesting fact about the girl who lost to Tina Pisnik last week at the opening round of Birmingham:

Saori is 3-0 vs. players with double names this year, and if Jelena has not changed her name to Dokic-Bernoldi during the last few days without telling us, we should be save :-)