The first match in Jelenas second big tournament in 2004 will take part today, and her opponent is Gala Leon-Garcia.

The 30 year old woman from the spanish capital Madrid is currently the number 98 of the world, which makes her the spanish number 8.

Her career started in 1996, and she reached the 4th round of the French Open in the same year. In 1999 she reached the same result, at Roland Garros again, but the other 29 (!) Grand Slam appearences never reached her that far. She must be quite dissappointed about that, because her parents own a snack bar named "Grand Slam" and a good result at any Slam would be the perfect way to advertise her parents business :-)

Gala has won one WTA-title in her career, which was back in 2000, and took place at the clay-courts of her hometown Madrid. Clay courts are probably her favourite surfaces anyway, because she was able to beat Jelena on Clay, too. That match was played 2001 in Sopot, and the left-handed player won 6-2 and 6-4. Before that the players meet at Wimbledon 2000, where Jelena won 7-6 and 6-1, and at the hard-courts of San Diego where Jelena won 6-2 and 7-5 and so the series is 2-1 to our girl. Even more impressive as Galas record on clay (played 128 matches and won 85 of them!) is her record on Carpet: She has never won a single match on this surface in her entire career!

Writing about her recent tennis is easy. 2004 seems to be not the year for Gala, as she has NOT won a single match at the four tournaments she entered so far! And also in 2003 she did not win much points at WTA-events, but had some excellent results at 75.000$ ITF tournaments. At Indian Wells last year she had to play in the Qualifyings and won vs. Greta Arn before failing to Jessica Kirkland.

Last I have to add the first win this season for the 1.63 meters small girl (thats 5`4"). She beat Tatiana Panova in three sets on wednesday, to proceed to round two. Ha ha, that actually means Gala is still 0-4 to players who are taller than her :-) and Jelena is 1.75 (5`9``)!

Lets just hope Gala will not be influenced by the terrible terrorist attacks which had happened in her home-town Madrid yesterday, and we see a great match :-)