Cara Black from Zimbabwe, who turns 25 this month, won the girls¹ singles title at Wimbledon in 1997 on her favourite surface. In 1998, Cara was voted the WTA newcomer of the year, finishing 1997 as the world junior number one in both singles and doubles.

The Blacks are a tennis dynasty. Together with her older brother Wayne, Cara won the 2002 French Open mixed doubles. Their coach and father, Don Black, competed at Wimbledon and was able to pass on his love of the game to his children, Wayne, Cara and elder brother Byron who retired in 2002.

Though Cara finished the last 6 years in the top 60 of the world, managed to win one WTA event, last year at Hawaii, where she beat Jidkova, Morariu, Likhovtseva, Leon-Garcia and Lisa Raymond, is the no1 player of her home country and the no2 of Africa she became more famous for her doubles skills where she won amazing 13 titles, most of them with Elena Likhovtseva.

She claims grass courts as her favourite surface, but has pretty good results on all surfaces beside on carpet where the match against Jelena will be played. Actually her best results happened on clay. Nameley at the French Open 2001 where she reached the fourth round which took her to a career-high ranking position of 31 and was her best Grand Slam Singles result ever and still is. A few weeks before that highlight in Caras Career she played against the most talented player of all times for the first and only time so far in her life and even managed to win a set against Jelena. 6-2, 3-6 and 6-4 to the favour of our girl was the exact score of that match, which took place at the German Open at Berlin.

Now the 1.67 meters tall girl from Harare has to honour to be Jelenas first opponent in 2004. She has already played 3 tournaments this year. At Auckland she reached round 2 where she lost to Marion Bartoli. At Sydney she felt to qualify though she was 4th seed of the qualification draw and at the Australian Open she lost to Daniilidou after beating Els Callens in the opening round.

Last Year at Tokyo, Cara lost the first round of the qualification to Morigami.

Thats about all information i found about Cara Black. I hope you enjoyed reading it and look forward to the match and to Jelenas season as much as I do.

uuups, and maybe that little fansite of Cara, where i robbed that picture from, is also worth a visit :-)
 
http://carabfan.at.infoseek.co.jp/index.htm