Jelena Dokic vs Mary Pierce

Mary Pierce was born on January 15th, 1975, in Montreal, Canada while her mother was on a trip to the city. She never lived in Montreal but maintains
an affinity with the people there whenever the WTA tour makes a stop for the Canadian Open.

Pierce made her professional debut at the tender age of 14, a record that stood until Jennifer Capriati broke it at the Hilton Head tournament in
1989. She cracked the top ten for the first time in 1994. The next year
Pierce made waves when she was victorious in Melbourne at the Australian
Open and she became the first French woman to capture a Major win since
1967.

The dream of winning for her native France however, was finally realized in
2000 when Pierce won at Roland Garros in Paris. And this would actually have
the best moment for Mary to end her career, as from then on she was not able
to win any other tournament.

In 2001 she only played 8 tournaments with gaining no success which would be
worth mentioning, in 2002 there was a Quarterfinal in Paris at the French
Open next to 12 rather disappointing results, and 2003 turned out to be not
very much better..... the quarterfinal appearence at Hyderabad and reaching
the fourth round of Wimbledon earned her most of the 137000 dollars she won
that year. Mut much more as pocket money for a girl who earned more than 6-6
million dollars only of price money in her career!!!!!

But i know why Mary continues playing! She faced Jelena Dokic in 1999! Got
beaten by her in straight sets and liked that match so much that she just
could not stop ;-)

And Mary had the honour to play the yougoslavian beauty again! At Hilton
Head in 2000 she even beat Jelena, but Jelenas revenge for that loss was
horrible: 6-2 and 6-0 was the score at Amelia Island in 2002 and also at
Berlin last year, Jelena beat the 1.80 meters tall girl though she lost the
first set 1-6!

Mary, who is ranked 64 these days, beat worlds no 191 Stephanie Gehrlein in
straight sets to gain the honour to play Jelena for the 5th time in her
career, and somehow i got the feeling it will be the last time. Especially
as i found that sentence at an interview she gave recently: "I've never
thought about what I'm going to do after tennis. The word 'retirement' has
never come to my mind. But I've been on tour for so many years, and for the
first time, I've started feeling my body."
-Mary Pierce