Article sent by Gerhard Grundhammer

The british no 2, and no 149 of the world, Elena Baltacha will be Jelenas first opponent at SW19 in 2003 on Tuesday.

Ukrainian born Bally, as she is called by her fans, claims like Jelena grass-court as her favourite surface and had her greatest success so far at Wimbledon. There she reached the semi-final of the girls tournament in 2001 where she lost to eventual tournament winner Angelique Widjaja, and reached the third round of the main draw last year.

Further successes of the 1.72 meters tall girl were winning the ITF trophies at Pamplona and Felixstone and claiming the biggest part of those 25.000 $ price money there, to be sent to her account.

Elena, who lives at Enfield, Middlesex, U.K. describes herself as self-confident, positive, hardworking and determinded has had a bad year so far, as she did not really well at any tournament she entered though she cant really blame her draws for that, as the only players she had to face i ever had heared the name before are Mandula, Stevenson and Poutchek, and of course she lost to all of them. Things could change though as now the short grass season has started and Elena had already beaten Emanuelle Gagliardi at Eastbourne last week. This match turned out to be a classic encounter, with Elena saving SEVEN set points (and coming back from 6/2 down in the tie break) to beat the top 70 ranked swiss girl. That was by far Bally's best win since beating Amanda Coetzer at Wimbleon in 2002. But at the second round things turned back to normal as she faced Virgine Razzano and the french girl was always on top and came throug in straight sets to condemn Baltacha to a 4-6, 1-6 loss in the 2nd round of Eastbourne qualifying.

Elena comes from a sporting background, mother Olga was a Russian pentathlete, father Sergie is a former Dynamo Kiev and Ipswich Town football player, and her brother also plays football.

That is about everything i found out about about the girl, who turns 20 in july, and never played Jelena before, but i dont want to end that little article without posting the most interesting statistics i ever made:

Jelena Dokic is 11-3 vs. players named Elena in her career (7-2 to Dementieva, 1-1 to Bovina, 2-0 to Likhovtseva and 1-0 to Tatarkova) and Elena Baltacha is 0-1 to all Jelenas on the circuit (lost to J. Jankovic in straight sets last year...